


Lies by Omission

by tigerlilycorinne



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexual Neville Longbottom, Eating Disorders, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Friends with Benefits to Lovers (kinda), Getting Together, Highly Sexual Blaise Zabini, Literally so stupid, Love Confessions, M/M, Many mentions of sex, Mutual Pining, Pining Blaise, Post-Hogwarts, Post-War, idiots to lovers, pining neville
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-06
Updated: 2020-10-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 22:55:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 30,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26342983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigerlilycorinne/pseuds/tigerlilycorinne
Summary: Blaise would like to sayI love you– or at least ask Neville out– but he ends up sort of… falling into bed with him instead, and Neville, well. Neville doesn’t know how to say he’s asexual– he’s notsex repulsed,but he feels like maybe this is information he’d like to convey.But while Blaise and Neville are best mates, there are things like holding hands and kissing and snuggling that friends with benefits do and friends don’t.So he’ll tell Blaise… some other time.
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter (background-ish), Neville Longbottom/Blaise Zabini
Comments: 22
Kudos: 113
Collections: Harry Potter Ace Fest 2020





	1. Aromantic Blaise?

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to everyone who pointed me towards the ace fest, and thank you especially to my sensitivity reader, felicja! Thank you for reading through so quickly... I was a pretty worried about not giving you enough time. *sweats*

**Neville**

Neville had heard a lot of things about Blaise Zabini over the years: when they were in First and Second Year, all the girls liked to say he was the “cutest” boy of their year. In third they started saying different words, like “ _handsome_ ,” and “ _hot_.” Neville thought a lot about it; occasionally he’d wish they’d look at him that way. Or he’d wonder if Zabini ever saw other people that way, or if it was a one-way street. 

He stopped wondering in Fifth Year, when the descriptive words shifted dramatically. Some called him things like “striking,” or “dead sexy,” or “a catch, for sure.” And others called him things like “faggot,” and “slag.” Neville didn’t know if they called him these things because they were homophobic, or because Blaise allegedly lost his virginity near the end of Fourth Year came back Fifth Year utterly _hungry_. He didn’t stop, and when Neville returned for Eighth Year and found out that Blaise had slept with _Ginny_ , he wondered if there was anyone Blaise _hadn’t_ slept with within their age range.

Except for him. 

Which made him very conflicted. He didn’t _want_ to sleep with anybody. And yet… he kind of wished Blaise would want him like that. And it wasn’t about just being wanted, because he knew Hannah had liked him for a few years… It was just Blaise. But also, he didn’t want to sleep with Blaise. He just wished Blaise would want to sleep with him?

One thing he’d never heard before, though, was “pining.” 

It was two years after Hogwarts, and after a tentative friendship with Blaise somehow stuck even after they left school, they’d become… friends. True friends. Neville might even say best mates, really. If he was alone in his room, blushing about it. 

And even now, best mates and all, he’d still never, ever heard this about Blaise.

“Blaise is a _mess_ , _Merlin_ , Harry, I can’t even be around him. I swear I’ve never seen someone pine so hard in my _life_.” Draco liked to exaggerate everything, but actually sounded as if he meant it. 

“Blaise?” Harry’s lip quirked up a bit, and he raised an eyebrow at Neville, who tried not to look like his heartbeat had just sped up. “You know about this Neville?” 

Neville stuffed a meatball in his mouth, and hid behind his glass of water. He wondered what shade of red he’d turned. 

Draco looked like he might laugh. “No, I doubt he has.”

Neville looked down, focusing on swirling spaghetti around his fork, and hoped the evening light would make it less obvious how much he desperately wanted to know _who_. Draco had to know, right? He swallowed. He had to stop _caring_ so much about Blaise. He knew very well that sexual attraction and romantic attraction were two different things; he was a prime example. But where he lacked sexual attraction of any sort, he often wondered if Blaise just… didn’t feel romantically attracted to anyone. Ever.

Blaise couldn’t help that any more than Neville could help falling in love with Blaise.

But apparently, he did get romantically attracted, once in a blue moon. If Draco was to be trusted. And Draco could be trusted, at least around Harry. Draco always tried to be honest around Harry, and Neville thought that was the sweetest thing he’d seen since Ron presented Hermione with a promise ring.

“Anyway–” said Draco, and Neville dropped his fork. 

“He’s dating Goldstein,” Neville interrupted urgently.

“For sex,” replied Draco immediately, looking very smug. Neville couldn’t imagine why.

“He always dates for sex,” Neville sighed, and looked away, around at the full Italian restaurant, peppered with candles, a couple of chandeliers hanging down and casting a yellowed light on the dark wood. 

Harry pushed the basket of garlic bread to Neville with a sympathetic look; Harry knew Neville was both asexual and in love with Blaise, two very incompatible things. No one else did. “He’s pining and also dating someone else?”

“Yeah.” Draco shrugged, and leaned against Harry, “He was going to be here tonight, but it’s been months and I said either do something about it or don’t come at all. He’s at Goldstein’s house now.” He scowled. “He’s such an idiot.”

“I was under the impression that that’s how you express affection.” Harry snickered.

“No, I-” Draco flushed. “Shut up. I mean it this time.”

“Do you know who–” Neville’s voice dipped a bit over the words and he tried to regain control over the pitch of his voice. “Do you know who Blaise fancies?”

“Sorry.” Draco didn’t meet his eyes, suddenly fascinated with Harry’s hair. “I can’t tell you.”

The comment was obviously not intended to hurt Neville– if anything, Draco looked truly reluctant to keep the name from him– but it stuck with Neville throughout the whole dinner all the same. Why not? They were friends, right? Blaise and Neville? Over the past few years, as Draco got more and more wrapped up with Harry and Pansy spirited away to France, Neville had fallen under the impression that he was one of Blaise’s closest friends. Did Blaise not trust him?

When Blaise told him a year ago that he hated his mother, but he sucked it up to her because he didn’t have a source of income, he kept it quiet. He was a good secret keeper, he thought, because he didn’t talk to many people anyway, and he wasn’t much for gossip. He knew Blaise didn’t want other people to know he had anything other than love for his mother, because then he’d look like both a manipulative bastard and a wimp, and Neville hadn’t told a soul.

But while Neville was good at keeping other people’s secrets, he was less good at keeping his own. He found this out on Monday, when he managed to make it painfully obvious how much the comment was eating at him. To Blaise. Who hadn’t even been to dinner. Because he’d been too busy fucking Anthony.

“So are you and Goldstein serious?” he asked over tea, with no prelude. He hadn’t meant to come straight out with it, but it spilled out of his mouth before he could stop the words, and as a result, they were also drenched in curiosity and a little too many feelings.

Blaise, whose feet were kicked up on the armrest of the couch so his whole body stretched the length of it, and therefore was in no position to drink tea, slowly sat up. He did everything slowly and gracefully, like he couldn’t be bothered to hurry, and had even less regard for the people who pretended they wanted him to, rather than wanted to watch him move, slinky and slow, like a cat. Neville thought someone who moved like that had to be good at hugging, at holding, at being leaned into.

“Him? Not more than anyone else.” Blaise put sugar and no milk; Neville milk and no sugar. He looked up halfway, meeting Neville’s eyes through his lashes playfully as he stirred in the sugar in slow circles of his spoon. “Why? You want in?”

“ _No_ ,” said Neville, probably more forcefully than he needed to. Did Blaise think he liked Anthony? Did he think he liked _Blaise_? No. Blaise would say something for sure, if he’d figured Neville out. Right? He flushed in response Blaise’s raised eyebrow at his vehemence. “I just… Draco said you were pining after someone. He didn’t say who.”

Blaise had gone very, very still, the ever-present slow movement of his fingers, or his wrist, or his arms or legs or head halted. His eyes suddenly looked very wide, and Neville cursed himself emphatically in his head. Why did he have to go and bring that up? It was a normal, good day, complete with spring sunshine and a soft breeze through Neville’s open window and an afternoon free of work. 

“I’m not pining after anyone.” Blaise resumed his slow, even movement: he tapped his spoon once against the white teacup and then laid it on the saucer, before sitting himself a little straighter, but the movements were jerkier now.

Neville got up and shuffled around the table to sit beside Blaise instead of across from him, taking the spot Blaise’s legs had vacated. “Okay,” he said stupidly.

“I don’t pine,” Blaise said, and turned a bit towards Neville, a small crease between his eyebrows. Neville, if he were brave, would reach out and smooth the crease down, pull Blaise in and hug him. Blaise was not a hugger.

“I know.” Neville sounded pitifully upset about it, even to his own ears. “Draco was wrong, then?”

“Draco,” Blaise muttered, “Is going to die. Sometime very soon.”

“I mean, if you’re not pining, that’s kind of a weird thing to say,” Neville blurted out. Did he sound as desperate as he felt? Was it obvious that he was grasping for straws? He put the teacup to his mouth, but it was a bit small to hide his face.

“Longbottom.” Blaise only called him Longbottom when he really wanted Neville to shut up, but he always said it with such fondness that it somehow invoked an ache in Neville’s chest anyway. “I am _not_ pining. After anyone.”

“Right,” Neville said. He looked down at the empty teacup in Blaise’s hand and took down the rest of his own tea. “Do you want some more tea?”

Blaise shook his head, but managed to do it lazily, a half smile tucked into the corner of his mouth. Neville wanted to hold this man’s hand, and kiss him, and laugh with him, and have dinner with him, only him. “I’ll pass.” He set down his teacup.

Neville watched him, wondering what it would be like to live with him. Share a teabox and a refrigerator and do his dishes not because Blaise came over to Neville’s house for tea half the days out of the week, but because they lived together. And then he wondered if Blaise might throw up if he saw into Neville’s mind and found out how sappy he was.

Neville set his own cup down and turned on the telly, letting it play very quietly to provide white noise and something to stare at if things got awkward. Harry had helped him set it up half a year ago, when Blaise apparently told Harry that Neville had mentioned his house felt too quiet sometimes.

Turning it on turned out to be a bad decision: it was a love confession scene, of all things, which turned the already stiff mood acutely uncomfortable. He didn’t look to see what Blaise thought of the awkward guy, textbooks in hand, or the blushing girl, tucking a lock of hair behind her ear. 

He didn’t need to.

“That’s unrealistic,” Blaise scoffed beside him, “Who goes and tells someone they’re in love like that? He’s so awkward.”

Neville was about as awkward as it got. “It’s a program,” he pointed out, instead of pointing out that the awkward thing could be something someone might learn to live with. Hypothetically speaking. “It probably had build up.”

“They’d look horrible together.” This was easy for Blaise to say, because Blaise was drop-dead gorgeous in anyone’s eyes, and he only dated other attractive people, a group which Neville was not a part of. 

“It’s sweet.”

“She’s literally taller than him. Without heels on. Do you see that? Look, wait ‘till they show them walking…”

“Are you aromantic?”

Blaise did the freezing thing again, where his eyes went big and his ever-moving body went still. “Sorry? Just because I don’t enjoy this couple–”

“It’s not–” When would Neville ever learn to keep his mouth shut? He turned off the telly, which he should’ve left off in the first place. “It doesn’t have anything to do with the show, I just, I was wondering. Are you. Aromantic. Because, you. Er.” He waved his hand at Blaise’s crotch, succeeding in driving the afternoon even farther off the road. At least he managed not to say, _I’ve been wondering for about two years._

Blaise looked at Neville for a very long moment, long enough to make Neville seriously struggle against the urge to squirm. He had beautiful eyes, especially lit by the sunshine, and long, long curled eyelashes. He had no income, a huge inheritance if his mother ever died, no plans for the future, and he hopped from person to person the way other people sped through books. Neville wanted to be his steady. His constant. He also wanted to stop wishing for impossible things.

Finally, Blaise unfroze, doing this gracefully as well. He tipped his head and gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I’m not aromantic, no.”

 _But you’ve never pined after someone?_ Neville didn’t ask it. Instead, he squeaked out over the pounding in his chest, “Would you like some more tea?” And then realized he’d already asked it. “I mean– You didn’t before. I guess I don’t know why you would now. I mean. Would you like to have tea tomorrow at– here, my house…” That was the thing with Blaise; he wasn’t an interrupter. He just watched calmly as Neville fumbled his words, not with a mocking expression, just patient and a little distant. He also didn’t usually take tea with Neville on Tuesdays, because Neville worked on Tuesdays.

“You have work,” Blaise said when Neville trailed off and made it very clear through his silence that he didn’t have anything more to say. “And I have a date with Goldie.”

Neville’s stomach twisted. “Yeah. Well. You’re right.” He looked away, at the bookshelf against the wall which carried a number of succulents, but no books. “Did I tell you about the flower in Norway’s largest magical botanical garden? They’ve got everything…”

And so the rest of the afternoon passed, with Blaise’s half-smile and Neville blabbering on about plants and trying to forget that Blaise wasn’t aromantic, but _didn’t do pining_ , and had a date with Anthony tomorrow.

**Blaise**

“I’m going to kill you.” 

Draco looked up from the letter he had in his hands, which must’ve been from Harry because Draco had gone all blushy and shit. “What for?” 

Blaise ground his teeth together. “You know damn well what for.”

No one else was in Draco’s flat, which was pretty small, since his parents had refused to fund any of his endeavours to build himself a new life. Draco hadn’t even wanted to build himself a new life, tucked up all comfy in the Manor, until Junior Auror Potter came around to check on his probation or something and Draco had suddenly decided he wanted to turn his life around. Like, seven years of pining and now he decided to change?

Now he lived in a little flat that some might call _cozy_ and Blaise would call _cramped_. Draco’s housekeeping skills ended at taking care of his clothes, and cleaning spells, so the flat had next to nothing in terms of dirt and dust, but the organization was shit. Books on the table, kitchenware in the glasses cabinet and glasses on the bookshelf, curious Muggle objects Draco had and didn’t know how to use cluttering up the already limited surfaces.

“I didn’t tell him who,” Draco protested, folding the letter crisply and sliding it into the pocket of his robes with a lot more care than any letter needed to be treated with. “Live a little. Stake some claims. Take some chances.”

“I’m not going to get myself a flat and get disowned and spend an entire year trying to win over Neville just for one date.” 

“Two,” Draco said, patting his pocket with an air of self-satisfaction. “I’ve a second date next week. Also, Potter took me to the Weasleys’ Easter celebration. And to a dinner he was having with Neville.” That must’ve been when he told Neville: the dinner that Blaise missed, because Draco kept getting at him to ‘make a move.’ “Maybe you should start working on your first.”

“I’ve had my first date. In _Third Year_.”

“One that matters.”

“That’s hurtful to everyone else I’ve dated.”

“Oh? Did they matter to you? I thought–”

Blaise marched himself over to the kitchen cupboard, which wasn’t far because the living room space and the kitchen space merged into one. There were clean socks and a pile of letters, all written in scratchy letters. He searched under the sink, found a box of cookies, and sat himself on the table Draco was facing, eating out of the box. “You’re not even remorseful.”

“No.” Draco waved a hand at him dismissively. “Take chances.”

Blaise shifted, putting his feet up on Draco’s couch. Draco made a face at his shoes on the cushions, but didn’t say anything. Just sent a pointed Scourgify to the soles of them.

“Not all of us get the date, lover boy.”

“Well, you should try. He’s got it bad for you, you dolt.”

“Don’t get all-knowing and shit. It took you seven years of pining and then a whole year of actually trying to get a single date.” It wasn’t that Blaise didn’t care for Neville– he did. More than it was healthy for a single human to care for anything, ever. But he _recognised_ that level of infatuation wasn’t healthy. He refused to indulge in it. He ignored the second part of what Draco said. “Stop meddling. Just because you’re stupidly happy doesn’t mean you have to saunter around making everybody else’s lives brighter, too.”

“Why not?” Draco demanded.

Blaise sat up so he could cross his arms properly. He and Neville were just different. They had different lifestyles and values and goals and even as best mates, they existed quite separately. And since Neville’s way of living was so much better than Blaise’s own, he was pretty sure Neville wasn’t exactly eager to bridge that gap.

“Because,” Blaise explained impatiently, “it isn’t going to work out.”

Draco reached into the pocket of his robes and pulled out his carefully folded Potter-letter again. “Sometimes it does,” he said. 

Of all the times Draco has been an absolute coward and given up, _this_ is when suddenly he’s decided to persevere? Well, besides the whole Potter situation, anyway. Blaise thought perhaps murdering Draco would be the best course of action, in respect for what his friend would have wanted if he had any dignity left. 

He stood and searched for the rubbish bin, which wasn’t under the sink, but by the door.

“Yeah? How long d’you think that’ll last?” he asked, mostly to get Draco off his back once and for all. He folded up the cardboard box.

“Fuck off,” Draco said in such a small voice, Blaise was fairly certain he could crush all of Draco between his thumb and forefinger.

“You’ve always called him thick. How long before he realizes going out with a guy who bullied him for seven years might not be healthy? Or remembers that you were part of a genocide group _dead_ set on killing him, and you’ve got a tattoo to show for it?” He regretted it as soon as it left his mouth. Bugger, he was a shit friend. 

Draco clutched the letter in his hand so tight, it wrinkled horrendously, effectively counter-acting his careful folding. It shook in his hands– or rather, his hands were shaking.

“Sorry,” Blaise muttered, extremely unequipped to deal with Draco’s lovesick dramatics. He glanced at the door.

The apology came too late: “I’m trying,” Draco said very miserably, “To make up for that. And he… he doesn’t hate me anymore, I think.”

Blaise suppressed a sigh. Draco was in a mood again, and as the catalyst of it, Blaise had to stay. “Salazar, of course he doesn’t hate you,” Blaise said in what he considered to be an extremely comforting tone. “I said I’m sorry.”

“He’s so very forgiving.” This was said dreamily, and Blaise decided the mood had passed.

“Hmmm.” He edged towards the door.

“He makes me happy.”

“Hmmm.” 

“Neville would make you happy, I think.” Draco looked up at him. “I just want you to be happy.”

“You’re guilt-tripping me,” Blaise realized, not quite ready to shoot Draco down again, even though he knew that was the point.

Draco shot up in his seat with indignation. “I am _genuinely upset_ , you bastard.”

“I know you are, but you’re using that to your advantage.” Blaise thought about saying no. 

Draco gave it up. “You just reminded me that I’m a Death Eater, and implied that Potter will never love me back.” To his credit, he did look genuinely pained at the words.

Blaise didn’t point out that Draco didn’t think Potter would love him back either. Draco looked too fucking pitiful.

“Fine.”

“I’ll give you two weeks, Blaise.” Draco grinned, and looked a bit happier. “No take-backs.”

Blaise did consider taking it back– on account of the ice-cold terror that clutched at his heart when he imagined himself sauntering over to Neville and asking him out– but he stepped out the door and heard Draco’s footsteps, loud and hurried, followed by retching, and he cursed quietly. Draco “only wanted him to be happy”.

This blatantly unfair conversation followed Blaise about for half a week, and on Friday he went to see Anthony Goldstein.

“Listen.” He peered into Goldstein’s admittedly nice house, though it was spacious enough that Blaise felt a bit small, and he hated feeling small, and figured if he couldn’t see anyone up the stairs or through the doorway, they were probably clear. “You’re a real catch.”

Anthony just looked at him a moment, his arms crossed and his hip against the door frame. He was so _fit_ and so terribly _nothing._ Blaise didn’t _care_ about him, and that was so, _so_ much safer. “You calling it quits, then.”

“Yeah,” Blaise said, and gave him a bottle of wine. “Sorry.”

Anthony shrugged, grinning at the wine. “Nice,” he said, to the wine, and to Blaise, “You give wine to all your exes? Shoulda dumped me earlier, Zabini. It was fun.” 

They shook on it, and kissed goodbye, and then fucked goodbye, and then drank the wine, and shook on it again. All in all, Blaise appreciated that they both didn’t value each other very much. No one would get hurt.

In contrast, he was most definitely going to be hurting for a good couple years if he followed through and… asked…

Actually, thinking about it right now wasn’t a good idea. He’d think about it later.

He was half drunk now anyway, he really was in no shape to think about anything terrifying.

Neville. Terrifying. Who would’ve thought?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it!


	2. Non-Aromantic Blaise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They go to a garden, they talk about dating friends, and they are disasters. 
> 
> That's the chapter.

**Neville**

“Broke up with Goldstein,” Blaise said over take-out pizza at his place. 

Technically, it was his mother’s place, but he had nearly half the house to himself– if it could be called a house. It seemed a bit grand to fall into the category of “house,” even though Neville had grown up in Gran’s large family house. This was a whole new level. Did Blaise think Neville’s little cottage-y feeling home was too homey? He wondered about it a bit too much, maybe. 

“You,” said Neville, feeling out of sorts. “You what?”

Blaise didn’t seem affected by it; he never reacted very dramatically to his breakups (or at all, really), but Neville never knew how to respond. Blaise didn’t care about a lot of things– should Neville care? If Blaise didn’t care, should Neville say sorry about it anyway, or should they both go on like nothing happened…?

“Broke up with him. Dumped him, I guess, although really it was a long time coming.” 

Blaise flicked his wand and muttered a Vanishing spell just in time– one of the house-elves, Nopkey, popped in with a platter of hot bread, tomatoes, basil, and mozzarella in balsamic vinegar, and some fancy-looking olive oil all balanced on a tray that looked unfairly large for such a small creature to carry. Blaise accepted the food as if he was hungry and hadn’t just been eating take-away.

Neville always did apologize, though, to be safe. “I’m sorry.” A long time coming? Last week, Blaise had been pretty eager over Goldstein– or, his arse, in any case.

Blaise wouldn’t eat much– he was always watching his weight, somehow believing his worth was invested solely in his sex appeal. Neville always wanted to pile him up a plate, talk to him about the joys of eating, and tell him that his worth was in his flat-voiced jokes and his steady friendship, and his odd denial that he was steady in anything, and his careful carelessness and his large, bare rooms filled with nothing at all that Neville knew he wanted to fill, but hadn’t found anything he cared about enough to fill rooms with just yet.

So Neville took the cheese, since it was the fattiest, and dipped his bread in oil, and Blaise took the tomatoes and shrugged fluidly.

“Spark faded, you know how it is.”

Neville did not know how it was. He’d never really… well he’d had a little thing with Luna, for what felt like five seconds, and that could’ve been a spark fading out, but it was more just… looking at it through a different angle. They were still friends. 

“You’ll stay friends?”

Blaise looked at him, and stretched out languidly, like a cat, and then sat up, changing his mind. Neville had known Blaise long enough to know this meant he was uncomfortable, or something was bothering him, or both. “Didn’t really know him enough to be friends.”

The couch cushions were firm, the furniture new, unlike the antiques Blaise’s mother kept. Blaise’s rooms looked like modern interior-design magazines, devoid of character. Neville ran his finger along the hard seam of the arm of the couch as he worked up his nerve.

“Do you never date friends, then?”

Blaise didn’t answer for a long time. Was that a bad question? Probably. Way to make it awkward, Neville thought, who’s his best mate. Oh, right, _you_.

“Nah.” _Oh._ “Reckon I’d break their heart, and then I’d be down to two friends.”

Blaise liked to say he only had Neville, Draco, and Pansy, despite Hermione, Harry, and Ron practically adopting him into their circle. Possibly because Neville was just that obvious. He wasn’t. Was he?

Maybe. Blaise didn’t make it easy. There were so many slightly different versions of himself that he’d bring out at different times, and Neville wanted to analyse them all, take them all home and hold them reverently in his hands, and find the core of them, and live side by side with the person behind these half-transparent, half-opaque masks. It didn’t take much for someone to notice just how tightly Neville clung to Blaise’s words, like Easter eggs, clues, treasures.

Neville ran out of cheese to distract himself with. “So you. Don’t think it could, like, end well?”

“How would that end well?” Blaise propped himself with an elbow on his knees, leaning forward as if curious. As if he genuinely couldn’t imagine a scenario in which dating a friend might go well.

“Er. People usually date people because they like them.” Neville reached for bread. Why hadn’t he just eaten bread? It wasn’t as if cheese was the only thing he could stall his mouth with. “So, if you aren’t aromantic, and you dated a friend, you might get feelings?” He could feel his face getting hotter and hotter. He should’ve dropped it. Why hadn’t he just dropped the subject entirely?

Blaise didn’t look thrilled with this either. This, Neville thought, might be the most awkward he’d ever seen Blaise look. His dark brows drew together just a little, like he was disturbed and trying to keep it down, and his finger made circles on the crystal-glass tabletop by the plate of bread. He was frowning, even, in the corners of his mouth.

“I’m gay, and Pansy is a woman. And Draco has belonged to Potter for as many years as I’ve known him.”

_And me?_ Neville wanted to ask, but realized that the question was monumentally stupid, and very obvious, so he sighed. “You’re right.”

“Shit idea,” Blaise said, to really drive the point home.

“Yeah, alright.” Neville switched subjects very subtly: “Have you tried dancing?”

They were going through the things Blaise might want to do, something he might end up passionate about. Neville told him living was just fine, but Blaise was really, well, _passionate_ about finding a passion. 

Blaise raised a slow eyebrow and the line of his shoulders relaxed. “Dancing? You mean, at clubs you don’t like to go to?” 

Sex clubs, he meant. Or, not _sex clubs_ but clubs people went to primarily to dance like they were having sex right there on the dance floor, and go home with someone new, and generally be young and reckless in ways that Neville wasn’t drawn to quite the way everyone else seemed to be. He did not want to go, because he didn’t quite fancy seeing Blaise Zabini dance like sex and take a guy home.

“I mean, as something to do. You like dancing, right?”

“You’ve never actually seen me dance,” Blaise pointed out, pushing the plate of balsamic vinegar away, now devoid of mozzarella or cheese, but with bits of basil in it. He twisted his mouth the way he did when he was about to suggest something sexual. “I could dance for you now, and you can pretend we’re friends, dating.”

It hurt more than Blaise probably meant it to– the way he said it was teasing, but it twisted a knife between Neville’s ribs. _You can pretend_. “No, thank you,” he said politely. Too politely.

Blaise looked concerned. “I wouldn’t dance all over you, if that’s what you were thinking.”

Neville shook his head. “Just not my scene, really,” which was also what he said about the bars. “I’m sure you’re good, and respectful of. Er. Boundaries.”

If Neville outlined them. Which he did not.

Blaise laughed and pushed the hot rosemary bread his way. So much of their time together was Blaise sitting there while Neville enjoyed food or drink of some kind or another, but Blaise never seemed to mind that they weren’t out being wild, the way he liked to spend his time. “Is dancing crossing a line?”

No. Yes. Yes, if it didn’t mean anything. That was crossing a line and moving the line. Yes, if it meant something, only the thing it meant would be a completely fine line to cross. “If. It’s the kind of dancing– what kind of dancing is it?”

“Not your type, for sure.” Blaise sat back, his sparkle having returned, and looked at Neville. “What is your type, anyway? I can’t see you enjoying ballet anymore than pole dancing.”

Neville fumbled with his bread. “You don’t _pole dance_. I know you don’t pole dance. I’d know if you were a pole dancer. Wouldn’t I?”

Blaise laughed again, this time, less as a conversation piece and more of an expression of delight, and affection that made Neville’s heart swell until it threatened his ribcage. “Merlin, calm your tits. ‘Course you’d know. I’d practice on you, probably, if I ever wanted to give it a go.”

“I take it back,” Neville said, stomach black and knotted. “Don’t try dancing.”

“Ballet?”

“No. You’d look wicked in a tutu, but I don’t think you’d like it all that much, do you?”

“Imagine me in tights,” Blaise grinned, extending his leg and pointing his foot. He had on soft leather shoes that had probably never stepped outside a house. 

Neville imagined. He imagined Blaise would be pretty itchy– tights had always looked exceedingly itchy, though he’d never tried them on, so he supposed maybe they weren’t as bad as they looked. He wasn’t sure if Blaise would turn ballet wear into a complaining point or prance around and turn it into a sex joke.

“I think you might be happy,” he said finally. “You’re an entertainer.” 

Blaise stretched out over the couch, his head propped on one hand as if posing for a sensual painting. “Me? An entertainer? Please.” He ran a hand up his leg. 

Neville suppressed a sigh. He’d love to just have a conversation, _once_ , where sex wasn’t anywhere in sight. He understood: Blaise knew he was sexy, and so talking about it made him feel valued. He didn’t begrudge Blaise that. But just once. Just once, he wanted to go to an art museum and not have Blaise raise an eyebrow at naked sculptures, or go to a garden and get a comment on sex in the flowers–

Had they ever been to the Oxford Botanic Garden?

“Hey– Sorry, I’m sure we’ll have more ideas– but are you free tomorrow? Or, some other time?”

“I’m sure I’ll be free at some point in my life.” Blaise smiled over at him, amused but so achingly fond. If only it meant something other than friendship. Not that he wasn’t honored to be Blaise’s friend– he was, of course he was. Especially considering how small Blaise kept his circle, how incredibly rare it was that he ever took to anyone at all. Was it horrible to wish, just a tiny, tiny bit, that he’d take to Neville in a _different_ way? Something romantic?

No, Neville decided. It just wasn’t _realistic._

“I mean. Are you free tomorrow, and if not, when do you think you will be? Free, I mean. Not that I have anything urgent, I just. Well, we haven’t been to any Muggle gardens have we?”

Blaise, as always, waited for the rambling to finish. “Not that I recall.” He had on the kind of tight, ripped jeans that looked like they might be worth as much as Neville’s table, and his fingers ran over the rip of them slowly, back and forth. “Do you want to go tomorrow?”

“I– are you busy?”

“I wouldn’t offer if I was.”

Blaise looked at the platter, now out of bread, and snapped his fingers. “Nopkey? Can you get more bread?”

Neville flushed. Blaise hadn’t eaten a single piece. “I– don’t _need–_ ”

Nopkey looked at him quickly. “You don’t need more of Nopkey’s rosemary bread, Mister Longbottom?”

Oops. “I mean, I would love more, I’m just not hungry– I’m not full, though! I could eat more. I love your rosemary bread, Nopkey.” He did. It was perfect when it came straight out of the oven, and it wasn't too dry the way many breads ended up being when not enough oil was used.

“Nopkey will bring you more bread, Mister Longbottom,” Nopkey declared eagerly, and Neville nodded.

Blaise snickered when Nopkey Disappirated with a _pop_. “You don’t have to flatter her. She already loves you for eating so much.”

“I _do_ like her bread.” Neville frowned at Blaise. “She only likes me for eating because you barely eat anything.”

“I do.”

“Blaise.” Neville waited for Blaise to look up. “Eat a piece, will you?”

Blaise’s mouth went flat and tight. 

“Just one.”

Blaise sighed. “I wish you’d leave it be.”

“I just– you don’t have to, I just– here.” Neville got up and tapped at Blaise’s shoulder. Blaise looked at him, and sat up, his mouth softening a little into a small half-smile. Neville’s heart softened in parallel. 

Neville sat beside Blaise in the space Blaise had vacated, and pressed his shoulder gently into Blaise’s for a moment, basked in the heat of the closeness between them for that second. “I’ll eat with you? Just one?”

Blaise smiled at his hands, something so incredibly soft and sweet that Neville melted _completely_. He leaned back into Neville a little bit. “Just one.”

Neville squeezed Blaise’s knee. “You don’t have to.”

“I already agreed, you arsehole,” Blaise said with no hostility.

Nopkey popped back in, a plate of bread in her hands. There were four hot squares of rosemary focaccia, on a creamy white plate.

Blaise leaned away, and Neville took back his hand.

And Blaise took a piece.

Nopkey stared at Blaise openly. “Oh! Master Zabini!”

“Thank you Nopkey,” Blaise mumbled. Neville gulped. Nopkey left, and as soon as she did, Blaise broke the square into two perfect halves, and handed the other half to Neville. “Sorry.” 

“Don’t be.” Neville wondered if it was alright to squeeze Blaise’s knee again. Or hug him. No, hugging wasn’t a thing Blaise really did. “You don’t have to eat that, either.”

But Blaise did.

“Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow.”

Blaise smiled. “Yeah, I’m open.” 

He had a hand on the rip on his knee again. If Neville just– held his hand–

“Great!” Neville ate the rest of the bread. “I’ll meet you here, or you’ll meet me at my place…?”

Blaise smiled again. Blaise was smiling so much today. He clearly wasn’t that broken up over Goldstien, which Neville felt terrible for feeling great about. 

“Meet you at yours.”

It felt like such a _thing_ , hearing those words from Blaise. _Meet you at yours_. Like something he might say if they were dating. And Blaise would knock, and Neville would step out, and Blaise would sweep him up in a quick little hug, and they’d go out hand in hand, and Blaise would smile the way he did just now.

That, of course, was not how it played out. Which was fine. Neville knew he was a daydreamer. 

Blaise showed up looking like an extremely well-dressed Muggle: perfectly fitting white button down tucked into perfectly fitting trousers, a casual blazer. “You’re staring, darling.” _Darling, darling, darling_. _Please stop teasing_.

“You’re good at dressing Muggle,” Neville said, instead of _you look extremely good, I want to hold your hand._

“Don’t sound so surprised.”

Neville couldn’t help a smile, even though it frustrated him endlessly that Blaise Zabini was apparently better than Neville at everything, including _dressing Muggle_. Blaise Zabini didn’t even go Muggle places. “I’m not surprised.” Neville shut the door behind him and looked down at his worn sneakers and grass-stained trousers. It was a bit warm out for his sweater-vest, but too cold for him to take it off, and in any case, mornings usually stayed relatively cloudy, and it looked like today would be no different. “I’ve seen you in Muggle club-wear.”

“Clubs are the same no matter where you go,” Blaise told him exasperatedly. Neville suspected Blaise had already told him this before, and he hadn’t retained the information. It was hard, with clothing. He just didn’t _care_ all that much about clothing, no matter how hard he tried to remember what went with what, and why, and how, and how often. “As long as it’s not some fancy country club, it’s about wearing as little as possible without looking too desperate.”

Oh yes, now Neville remembered. “In my defense, I think we were watching a nature show when you told me that.”

“I remember. You cried over it. The fish released so much sperm the water turned white.” From his tone, Neville couldn’t tell if Blaise thought this a good or a bad thing. He sounded amused and fond. Probably not of the fish. Probably of Neville. Blaise reached for his arm. “We’re Apparating, I hope.”

Neville held his arm back, appreciating their closeness for a moment, and Apparated them to the nearest point. 

The Oxford Botanic Garden was a bit old and classy, like Muggle classical literature, or the Muggle “fairy-tale”– castles and flowers, stone arches and brick walls. Even the white, thinly-cloud covered sky seemed right, like it was playing into the feel of the garden.

They appeared in a corner between two of these brick walls, a plant vine hanging from a pot roped to a metal hook that protruded on the wall brushing against Blaise’s ear. Blaise jerked a little in surprise, and Neville laughed. It was so rare to see Blaise break his facade because of something unexpected. Blaise never acted like he was _above_ everyone else, exactly, but _disinterested_ , yes. Like the whole world was predictable and dull.

“It’s just a plant.” Neville reached out and pushed the vine away gently.

“ _Just a plant_?” Blaise smiled and nudged Neville a little bit, leading the way out of the narrow brick alley. “Neville Longbottom, I’d never thought I’d hear the day when you’d imply plants were inconsequential.”

“Inconsequential is an exaggeration, and you know what I meant anyway.” 

“Hmm? What did you mean?” 

Neville didn’t clarify; they’d reached the line to the pay desk, and he was busy trying to figure out payment. “Which one is a pound?” he whispered hurriedly to Blaise, rifling through the little pouch of Muggle bills he kept on the shelf for whenever he might want to use them. He’d stuffed it in his satchel without actually figuring out the money system. It was all very confusing, that they used paper. He’d paid Muggle establishments before, but he never managed to remember how to use those bills after he’d used them– practice made perfect, but he always needed so much more practice than everyone else. 

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Blaise murmured back, his hand on Neville’s arm. He leaned in to peer at the bills. His chest brushed against Neville’s chest. “The lady’s gone– We’re next in line. And she’s come alone, so she’ll take two minutes to pay, at the most.”

“Not helping,” Neville muttered frantically, wracking his mind. Pounds were the paper ones, right? Weren’t pounds American units of weight? No, the sign said _pounds,_ so obviously they were money– but if they were a weight in American measurement systems, wouldn’t they be coins? Coins were heavier–

“Our turn!” Blaise said cheerfully, and Neville stumbled up to the desk. 

The grey-haired lady at the desk had a name tag that read _Catherine_ , which felt like a name that belonged to someone in an old garden like this, or else knitting, with a bunch of cats on her rocking chair. “Two tickets?”

“Yes please– er– here.” Neville put a number of bills down. The paper money would probably add up to enough pounds, whatever pounds were. He added coins, too, just in case. Some of those had to be pounds. He could feel Blaise shaking gently with laughter beside him, and jabbed Blaise’s side with his elbow.

Blaise responded with an arm around his shoulders, and Neville could feel himself slowly going red. Blaise was warm, and he smelled strongly of crisp cologne and faintly of honey. And he was single. The thought had hovered at the back of his mind all day, and came back with full force now, as they stood watching the confused Muggle woman count out a large amount of change. _Blaise was single_ , and had his arm around Neville, and was… and was not interested in ever dating his friends.

“Here you go.” Catherine handed them over a massive handful of coins and a thin wad of bills. Neville took these, struggling to put them back into his little Muggle Money pouch, and Blaise took the tickets gracefully, with a half-smile at Catherine, as if saying _Oh, I know. This guy, always a mess._

“Thanks so much for the help,” Neville grumbled with no real animosity as they walked in. The garden sprawled out before them– a stone road cutting through swaths of grass, leading under a pointy stone arch. “You don’t know how to pay Muggle?”

“It’s really pretty here, Neville.” Blaise’s arm slipped from his shoulders to loop about his waist, and Neville nearly tripped over his own feet. Blaise was looking about with something sort of bright in his eye. A soft sort of glow. Private, almost. Neville warmed all over and thought he would give _anything_ for Blaise to reconsider, even for a moment, dating his friends. “I don’t know why you’d think I could pay Muggle.”

“Well, you’ve gone places, haven’t you?”

“Oh, yeah. Plenty of places.”

“You know what I mean. Muggle places.”

Blaise tipped his head to the side thoughtfully, letting Neville lead them down a fork in the path, along a stone wall. “Yeah, Draco always paid, or if I was with you, your Gryffindor friends.”

Neville stopped to admire an extra-perfect dalia, bright, brilliant red, flawless and bold. Gardens made him so happy– the plants were so well cared for, the soil so dark and rich. Where the dalia’s stalk sprung from the dirt was framed by bright green leaves. “They’re your friends, too.”

“Hmm,” said Blaise.

“What about clubs?”

“Flirting does wonders for someone who doesn’t have Muggle money.”

“Ah,” said Neville.

Both sides of the path were bordered by low-growing, flowering herbs. They flowed over the wooden path-barrier just a bit, abundant and healthy. The air smelled like so many different things at once– thyme, oregano, sage, honeysuckle, fresh rain and crushed rosemary.

“Oh, it’s _gorgeous_ in spring,” he breathed, looking down the path. “The plants look so _happy_.” It felt like country-side springtime in the gardens behind his Gran’s house, where he would grow anything he could manage: new and refreshing and still as old as time. “Don’t they look so happy?”

He looked over at Blaise, but Blaise wasn’t looking at the plants; he was looking at Neville with an unbearable sort of care and a rare tenderness. “I thought Muggle plants were non-sentient.”

“I mean… well, yeah, but they look so– look at them!” Honeysuckle climbed up the lattice that hugged the stone wall, clusters of it bursting abundantly from the frame. “They’re so…”

“Beautiful?” Blaise said softly. He was still looking at Neville.

“Yes, beautiful,” Neville agreed. “Not me, the _plants_ , Blaise. I know you don’t care about plants all that much, but even you have to admit that _this_ is… it’s a dreamland here.”

Blaise _hmmm-ed_ and finally looked at the surrounding greenery, young and fresh, dotted with the white jasmine flowers, the lavender of the rosemary and sage flowers. “Of course I care about the plants. _You_ care about the plants.”

_What matters to you matters to me_ was _such_ a romantic thing to say. Not that friends didn’t care deeply about each other, but it felt misleading nonetheless. It implied, Neville felt, the sort of love he knew Blaise would never _actually_ feel for him. And then he instantly felt bad for thinking it. Blaise was a great friend! Why wasn’t that enough?

But Blaise had seemed rather affectionate and flirty, and downright sweet all day. 

Which was completely the point: friends did that. To doubt that was insulting to Blaise’s capabilities as a friend, and while Blaise liked to deny it, he was a really, _really_ good friend. 

And anyway, he didn’t _actually_ want to date Blaise. He just wanted… well, he wanted what dating meant to _most people_ , Blaise not included. He didn’t want a relationship centered around sex, even though sex didn’t repulse him the way he knew some people were. He just wasn’t interested. And Blaise… if dancing and painting weren’t his passions, sex was.

He didn’t want that kind of dating.

He absolutely did not.

At all.

In any way.

And if Blaise ever asked him out, Neville would have the strength to probably maybe possibly say no.

He was sure of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you tell I really like gardens?


	3. A Sexy Neville?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If Blaise is trying to be subtle, he isn't doing to well. Lucky for him, Neville is as oblivious as they come.

**Blaise**

Blaise looked up at the light _ding_ that signalled someone had come through the wards. It was probably Neville, or Draco. Pansy didn’t believe in going about on Sundays; she liked to rest up, or get some expensive beauty treatment.

There was a long couple minutes. Blaise thought about Neville coming through that door, of Neville’s sweet, wondering smile in the Oxford Botanic Gardens. The gardens, of course, had been a wonder. Bright and full, healthy as the ones Neville grew himself. Blaise could _feel_ how much of a happy place gardens were for Neville– after all, they restored his faith in nature. He remembered the last time they’d watched a nature documentary, and Neville had teared up on the mention of destroying wildlife and the growing problem of global warning. 

Neville had been such a _sweetheart_ yesterday. And today… well. _Two weeks, no take backs._ He’d almost asked Neville out. _Several times_. And the _idea_ of it was terrifying. So terrifying that he didn’t. He just did a whole lot of staring. 

Draco couldn’t expect him to get his act together that quickly, anyway. Blaise had been pining for Merlin knew how long now– years of some number he didn’t want to count or he’d feel pathetic… two. Three? Four? Possibly five. And now he had _two weeks_? Whatever. 

It was Draco’s fault for having such high expectations.

“So, ask him out yet?”

“I knew it was you.” He hadn’t, but he knew now. He figured he’d be nervous about Neville even if he knew it was Draco anyway, because Neville invaded every moment of his mind, so it didn’t really make a difference.

“Sure you did.” Draco’s eyes were shining. “So, my date went well.”

Blaise wasn’t very interested in Potter’s dick right now. Yesterday, he went to the Oxford Botanic Garden with Neville Longbottom, and got to see the closest thing to Neville Longbottom in love– though of course it had been with the _flowers_. 

However, he wanted to talk about _that_ even less, so: “Do tell.”

Draco sighed dreamily, and Blaise realized, as he sat up and actually looked at Draco instead of staring at the arching high ceiling of the Zabini mansion, that Draco was wearing Muggle clothing. Trousers, button-down, suit jacket, as if Harry Potter would go to a lunch date with anything more formal than a Tee-Shirt, or whatever he called them. “We went to lunch.” Draco grinned and sat elegantly down on one of Blaise’s sofa’s. “I hate your couches. Why are they so stiff?”

“Yours are antique, what do you mean _mine_ are stiff?”

Draco waved a hand at him airily. “Shut up, I’m telling you about my date.” Blaise shut up obediently, though he pulled a face and made a show of flopping back down on his back and returning his gaze to the ceiling. “He practically fought me over the bill,” he said fondly.

Blaise rolled his eyes. “You’re turned on by his aggression towards you? Just go back to being rivals, then.”

He heard Draco’s foot drop down onto the floor as he uncrossed his legs and leaned forward. Draco liked to lounge about like he didn’t care, but he cared so much his disinterested air only lasted a minute or two, unless he was really trying. Which he really only did around Potter, to the amusement of everyone around him. “No, this is so much better. Blaise. _Blaise._ He _kissed me._ _He kissed me._ _Me!_ ” 

Despite himself, Blaise’s heart warmed. “Are you just going to repeat every phrase you say twice? I heard you the first time.”

“Did you? Did you hear me? He _kissed me,_ Blaise. He fought me over the bill, and he remembered I don’t like tomatoes, and he walked me to my apartment and then at the door he– _Merlin_ – he stopped and went, _Draco_.” _Please keep talking. Please forget about Neville._ Draco’s voice went soft on his own name, gentle and sweet. Obviously it was an impression of Potter; Draco tried his very best not to be Hufflepuff around Potter– he had the notion that if he was really as affectionate as he felt, he’d scare Potter off. Which wasn’t completely false, Blaise figured. “Like, like he liked my name, or something.”

“Like he liked _you,_ maybe?” Blaise suggested dryly, sitting up finally, because Nopkey had brought in tea. “Just a thought.”

“ _Merlin_ ,” said Draco. “And he kissed me. He said my name, and then he kissed me…” He sighed and looked at Blaise. “Do you understand how big this is?”

“Yes,” Blaise said honestly. “I’m happy for you.” _Please keep talking._

“So… what about you and Longbottom? You have half a week. Please tell me you’ve gotten your shit together.” 

_Dammit._

“Keep talking about Potter.”

Draco’s dreamy-eyed look dropped in an instant. “ _That’s_ a no, then.” Draco groaned, burying his face into his hands, like Blaise’s reluctance to ruin his own life was somehow _Draco’s_ failing. “What is _wrong_ with you?”

“I just said I was happy for you, and this is how you repay me?” Blaise crossed his arms and wondered how long he could keep Draco going in circles. A long time, he hoped. Forever, he hoped. Until he left, at least.

“I bet you said that to keep me going, so I wouldn’t ask,” Draco pointed out, looking at Blaise with no small measure of scrutiny. _Yeah, mostly._

“Maybe I had multiple motives.”

“Humph.” Draco looked at the tea. “Tea? Have tea.”

“No, thanks.” Blaise didn’t like tea- it was usually pretty bitter, but he didn’t want to put too much sugar into it. Sugar was a lot of, well, sugar. If people just put it in for him, suddenly he didn’t feel as guilty about it anymore, but the only one who ever did that was Neville and he felt foolish asking anyone else to do it for him. Which was about half the reason he went to Neville’s for tea all the time. Or, maybe a quarter. Neville himself was quite a draw. Or maybe a fifth. 

“When was the last time you ate?”

“When was the last time we had a conversation that wasn’t a questionnaire?” Blaise frowned at Draco. “Can’t you leave off for a minute? Come on, tell me more about Potter.”

“What haven’t I told you about Potter?” Draco said thoughtfully, with no irony whatsoever.

“Nothing, I think.” Blaise answered, because it was true. “But tell me again anyway.”

“Oh! I think he knows a bit about Neville. And you.”

“No, thank you.”

“You can’t _no, thank you_ a conversation.” Draco frowned at him again. He had been spending too much time with Hermione Granger, Blaise thought, because he looked the picture of disapproval, with just the Granger-signature touch of I-Know-I’m-Right. But Granger _was_ always right, and Draco not so much. “I think you should give it a go.”

“We’ve already had this conversation.” Blaise wondered if it would be rude to leave his own house. “And I don’t think I should. I broke up with Goldstein a week and a half ago–”

“Which means you’ve got a half week left, about–”

“Which _means_ it’ll look like Neville’s a rebound.” As soon as he said it, Blaise realized it was true. He _couldn’t_ ask Neville out that soon; it just wouldn’t be fair. He had to give Goldstein a long enough rest that it didn’t look suspicious in any way that he’d broken up with Anthony and immediately asked Neville out.

“So tell him he isn’t.”

He tried to imagine that. _Hey, Neville, not to ruin our friendship or anything but do you want to go out? By the way, you are not a rebound._ “I don’t think there’s a very elegant way to insert that into natural conversation.”

“I don’t think it needs to be elegant,” Draco said completely unnecessarily. Draco had abandoned all elegance in his pursuit of Potter, and Blaise had no intentions of following suit.

“How many times do I have to tell you that I don’t want a love-life like yours?” Wrinkling his nose, Blaise accepted a slice of apple from the plate beside the tea, because Nopkey had popped back in and was watching him critically. “I’d rather be normal than wildly head-over-heels.”

“Just _ask him out._ ”

 _No takebacks._ Why had he made a promise like that? It wasn’t as if it was a fairly drawn deal or anything. “Give me more time, at least,” he said finally, “So it doesn’t look like Neville’s a rebound.”

Draco eyed him shrewdly. “How long do you want?” he asked incredulously, making it completely clear that his question did not in any way imply he’d grant the request. 

Now it was Blaise’s turn to groan and run his hand over his head. _Forever, please and thank you._ “A long fucking time.”

“Denied.”

“A month.”

Draco peered over the edge of his cup. “That _is_ a long fucking time.”

Blaise sighed. “You’re too much of a meddler. You have to let people live their own lives.”

Draco adopted a kicked puppy look so exaggerated, Blaise knew Draco was mocking him. “ _I just want you to be happy_ ,” he simpered, and then more seriously, “Come on, you never break your promises to your friends. Aren’t I your friend?”

“You’re a manipulative bastard is what you are,” Blaise muttered. It was true, anyway. Draco didn’t have much of a conscience when it came to fucking with the people he cared about, though to be fair, he fucked with them for their own good. This time, however, Draco seemed to have been misled to believe that he was doing good, when no such thing was the case. 

“What was that?”

Blaise sighed again. “I said, give me two _more_ weeks.”

Draco grinned victoriously. “That’s what I thought.”

~~~

Two more weeks was a lot less time than Blaise had initially thought. The ticking clock did not impose any less pressure on him simply by being set back two weeks, he realized.

Even Neville noticed something was up. 

“Hey.” 

Blaise looked up. He’d stretched out on Neville’s couch again. Neville had already been sitting on the couch, but he’d gotten up to make them tea– milk no sugar, sugar no milk– and when he came back in to see Blaise stretched out on the couch, he’d smiled and pulled up a chair. Blaise didn’t know why he found this so incredibly sweet. Neville hadn’t said a thing, hadn’t stopped in the doorway or made a face. It was as if they were on the same wavelength of thought, the way couples like Granger and Weasley were. In sync. 

“Hey,” Blaise said, trying not to watch too intently as Neville licked the tea off of his lips. 

Neville’s eyes looked over him worriedly, like a relative might look over their loved one with a fever. “Are you alright?”

“Hmm?” Blaise sat up so he could better drink his tea, and Neville immediately sat down beside him on the vacated space, just like he always did. “Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?” _No, because I love you and I don’t ever want to ask you out._

“You’ve been…” Neville scuffed his shoe against his wooden coffee table. They hadn’t turned on the telly today– Neville seldom did when Blaise was around, but Neville had told him that it had made a difference to the quiet house when Blaise wasn’t around. Right now, Blaise was right here, and the house was still very quiet. “You’ve seemed upset. Is there something bothering you?”

“No,” Blaise said easily. He leaned his shoulder against Neville’s lightly. “Just wondering when I’ll ever find something to care about.”

“Ah.” Neville didn’t sound all that convinced. “Well, maybe you _should_ give pole-dancing a try.”

Blaise laughed and pushed at Neville lightly, watching Neville’s eyes light up when he laughed. Neville loved making Blaise laugh, and Blaise loved watching Neville smile at his laugh and _Blaise could lean over and kiss him right now_. But he didn’t. Neville was a nice guy, and not in a bland way. He was eagerly, earnestly, nice, the sweet kind, and everyone’s laugh made him happy. Potter’s laugh made him happy, Granger’s laugh made him happy, Weasley’s laugh made him happy, Lovegood’s laugh made him happy. Blaise was not unique in his laugh.

“I don’t want to pole-dance. I want something legitimate. You know that.” 

He wanted to care about something the way Neville cared about gardening, or Potter about orphans, or Granger about Muggle-born rights, or Draco about Potter. Something that really, _really_ mattered to him. A small part of his brain told him that perhaps this thing was, in fact, Neville. But Granger and Weasley loved each other something fierce and it wasn’t as if their love for each other was their purpose in life. And Neville loved _everyone_ and cared about his plants, too. And Blaise loved just one man and cared about fuck-all besides. What did that make him? Extremely pessimistic and unappreciative of the world. Not the most fun person to be around.

“I know, I know.” Neville squeezed his shoulder, the warmth of his palm soaking through Blaise’s shirt and setting him gently alight. “What about, what about plant study?”

“ _Neville_ ,” Blaise groaned, “Listen, I love you, but you say that _every time_. I have nothing against plants, but they’re not my passion.”

Neville didn’t say anything.

Blaise looked up. Neville was staring at him, his eyes soft and his mouth in a half-confused smile. _I love you._ “You know what I mean.” _As friends,_ was implied. Blaise knew this. The context made this evident, but Neville still… he shook it off. “What you want isn’t necessarily what I want.”

Neville blinked and looked away. “I know,” he said, almost heavily. Blaise didn’t know what the deal was. 

“Botany is a great thing,” Blaise sighed, “It’s just not _my_ thing.” 

“Botany is for everyone,” Neville insisted, but his grin betrayed him. “Anyway. I know you love talking to people, and, you know, being social, and parties and things.”

“That’s not a _passion_.” Blaise set down his finished tea, feeling rather full. It was, after all, mid-afternoon, and therefore certainly not meal time. Neville, who had a respectful disregard for an eating schedule, didn’t miss meals, but also had biscuits with his tea. Blaise did not join in.

“It can be. You could be an… a… someone who works on parties!” 

“An event organizer.”

“Yes. That.” Neville smiled at him, comfortingly this time. He had a million smiles. The man was a master of smiles, and all of them were heartwarming. “You’d be good at that.”

“I don’t think that’s really my thing either; have you seen my rooms?” Blaise pointed out. They weren’t exactly _well decorated._ They looked, Draco always said, like a magazine spread for a Muggle thing called University, where twenty-something people went and stayed in another place to learn– boarding school but for older people. Blaise didn’t think _boarding school_ was a compliment. Draco didn’t think so either. Neville never seemed to care, he just enjoyed the food and looked at Blaise instead of the bare walls.

Neville set down his tea and rubbed his chin. He had a bit of a beard: a thick sort of scruff that made Blaise’s mouth go dry. Blaise swallowed and tried to stop imagining mouthing over it, running his hands down Neville’s soft body, falling into Neville’s arms as Neville leaned back against the sofa–

“–Modeling?”

“Hmm?” Blaise looked up into Neville’s eyes, blue and framed with lashes that made them twice as pretty. Salazar help him, he’d been staring at Neville’s beard, watching Neville stroke it absently. “I don’t know if modelling can be a passion either. How can you be passionate on strutting down a line in extravagant clothes?”

“Malfoy would find a way.” 

The sun came out from behind the clouds, shining down on them through the window behind the couch and the light caught in Neville’s eyes, drawing attention to his lashes, his lips. Neville was looking him up and down in a friendly way– only Neville could make looking someone over like that _not_ blatantly sexual.

“You’d be a good model. You’ve _got_ it, d’you know what I mean?” He said this easily, matter-of-factly, as if it was known unequivocally that Blaise could model. 

Blaise felt his face go hot, even though he _did_ know. He was conventionally beautiful, and in no small amount either. But hearing it from Neville was another thing. “No, I’m not sure I do. Do tell.”

Neville’s face went gorgeously red. “I– you do. I know you do,” he spluttered, leaning back on the sofa (for an entirely different reason than Blaise wished him to).

“You think I’m good-looking, do you?” Blaise leaned forward teasingly, fluttering his eyelashes and giving Neville a look that he knew was absolutely _filthy_.

“Of _course_ I do!” Neville all but squeaked, back on his elbows now. “Look in a _mirror_ , Blaise!” His face had flushed crimson, and he– he was–

He was staring at Blaise’s lips.

Blaise’s brain shut down for a moment. Or two. Or a lifetime. Their faces were six inches apart, tops, and Neville was staring at Blaise’s lips. Blaise’s heart pounded in his chest. _I could kiss him right now._ He didn’t. He just stayed there, holding himself over Neville.

Neville was a nervous talker, and right now, he was babbling the most interesting things. 

“You’re beautiful,” he was saying, “You’re bloody gorgeous, you _know_ you are– I– I don’t think I’m unique in thinking that– I mean, it isn’t as if you didn’t know– I mean, you’ve seen yourself, right? I mean, you act like, like, you know you’re… you’re how you are. I…” he trailed off, looking up at Blaise.

And then.

He reached up, just briefly, and ran a hand from Blaise’s shoulder, down to the small of his back, a small crease between his brows. Blaise lit on fire. He thought maybe he was dreaming. He thought maybe he was _dying_. He thought _maybe, he will kiss me_. He thought, _no he fucking won’t_.

Blaise sat up, pulling Neville up with him by the hand. “That was certainly a compelling argument.” 

Neville made a sound and buried his face in his hands. “Shut up.”

“You have more to say? I’m all ears.” It was a miracle Blaise’s voice was even working. 

“You _know_ you’re beautiful.” Neville said again. “I don’t– I don’t have to tell you.”

Blaise was quietly falling apart. “You’re not so bad yourself,” he said, and realized that his brain had definitely taken a vacation when Neville’s hand went down his back. The path of Neville’s hand still burned, fiery in memory of Neville’s touch. It hadn’t even been skin-to-skin. Blaise was so fucked.

Neville laughed softly, not like he thought Blaise was joking, but not liked he believed it either. “That’s nice,” he said, like a parent might tell a child blabbering nonsense. 

Blaise’s heart went tight in his chest. “I mean it.” _You started it, now finish it._ “You are… I mean you’re…” He didn’t know how Neville did it, spewing compliments like it was nothing at all, like it wasn’t the most vulnerable thing you could do.

“You don’t have to.” Neville shrugged and looked at his tea. He didn’t pick it up. “I appreciate the sentiment anyway.”

“No, it’s not–” when had the roles reversed? “It’s objectively true.”

“It’s not a big deal,” Neville said with a smile, and nudged Blaise’s shoulder. “C’mon, fake compliments don’t suit you.”

“Fake compliments? _Fake?_ ” _You’re the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen. You have no idea what you make me feel._ “I love– I love the way you look,” Blaise finished lamely, his heart going a hundred beats a moment.

Neville shook his head, his smile dropping. “Stop. I’m serious. I don’t need this.”

 _Oh, Merlin,_ Blaise thought, and kissed him.

Hard.

He brought both hands to Neville’s face and grabbed him, pulling him in and pressing their lips together, their bodies together, soft and warm and everything in Blaise lit up like a fireworks show. Neville’s lips on his, careful where Blaise was not.

_Kissing back._

_I’m dreaming, I’m dreaming, I must be dreaming,_ Blaise thought, and he didn’t care. Not right now. Not with Neville’s hands settling lightly on his waist and his heart bursting in his chest and _Neville Longbottom kissing him back._

When they pulled apart, nothing happened for a long moment. Blaise didn’t know what to say, and Neville, for once, seemed to be shocked to silence. 

He looked like a god, Neville did. His hair was a mess– _I did that,_ Blaise thought dazedly– and his eyes were blue and wide and his throat was bobbing nervously, and his lips were pinker and even more kissable, and still they were only inches apart. 

“Fuck you,” Blaise whispered finally against Neville’s lips. “If you really think I’m kidding, then you really do need this.”

Neville was still staring at his lips, his eyes flicking up to Blaise’s and back down almost worriedly. Stunned. 

Blaise didn’t let go of Neville’s face. “You. Merlin, Neville, _you are beautiful_. I mean it.” 

The words felt strange coming out of his mouth, far too sincere. He didn’t like this whole being-honest thing all that much; it certainly wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Everyone said letting this sort of _I worship you_ confessions out gave someone a sense of freedom and trust. No it fucking did not. It gave them a sense of terror and made them feel horribly sappy and vulnerable. 

“And,” Blaise added quickly to lighten the mood, “I have been wanting to fuck you for the past few days, so if you think you’re not attractive, I reckon you ought to rethink that particular assumption.” It was true, after all. He’d ached for Neville for the past few days. And a few years before then. 

“You.” Neville swallowed hard, and Blaise made a show of watching his Adam’s apple bob. If he was going to be lusty to hide his pining, he’d better make it look like he had an _incredibly_ strong urge to suck dick, because his romantic affections were enormously hard to hide. “Want to…”

Blaise eased up because his heart was beating so fast, he was sure Neville would feel it pounding against his chest. It felt like it might fly out of its ribcage. Flee the scene, maybe, before it had to stick around and hear Neville let him down easy. Neville didn’t really do all that much dating, as far as Blaise was aware. He’d had a thing with Luna Lovegood that had lasted for the blink of an eye, really, when one thought about it, but it had felt like a torturous millenia to Blaise. 

It was fine, Blaise decided. If Neville let him down easy. Because Neville was so achingly _kind_ , it wasn’t as if he’d ever let anyone down _hard_. He’d cushion the blow so well, that kind, sweet man, that it would only feel like death, not torture. Probably. And Blaise could be happy about it. After all, if Neville let him down easy, that would mean Neville was happier without him. Which would mean Neville would be happy. 

So really, it was a winning situation.

He’d never really been rejected before. It would be a new experience. A learning experience, a growing experience, and definitely not something he would need to run to the bathroom and cry about, after. 

Blaise was quite ready to be let down easy.

And then Neville had to go and turn everything on its head.

“Why don’t we, I mean. Maybe we could work up to it?”

There was no asking out. Or _are we an item_. There was no _what, exactly, does this mean?_ Blaise couldn’t bring himself to ask, and shatter the fragile thing hanging in the balance between them.

That fragile thing, he noted with no small amount of euphoria, was _more kissing. With Neville._

They were working up to it, and Blaise had never been more willing to work.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can pry sexy, chubby Neville from my cold, dead hands.


	4. A Romantic Blaise

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They have a picnic and pretend everything is fine. The boys are taking their sweet time.

**Neville**

Sex with Blaise was alright. It was Neville’s first time, and as he expected, he found it not exactly all it was cracked up to be. It was like masturbating, but with someone else. 

Like all Blaise’s other adventures, they didn’t take long to work up to it. It wasn’t as if Blaise dated for feelings, though it was a bit of an odd idea, Blaise wanting him that way. Neville didn’t exactly think of himself as sexy. Was he? Maybe Blaise had strange tastes. Or was being nice. _Merlin_ , he wasn’t being nice, was he? Blaise was an incredibly dedicated friend, and he liked to pretend he wasn’t because it seemed like a sappy thing to be, and pretending to have a huge hard-on for his insecure friend seemed like the type of good-friend-sexually-explicit thing he’d do to fix that situation up. 

They were having dinner with Draco and Harry at Grimmauld Place now. Blaise didn’t eat much, though Kreature served many, many very good courses. He never ate much.

“Oh,” Draco was saying, “Kreacher always serves this much. It’s not because there are four people, it’s just because this is how he is.”

Blaise raised an eyebrow at Neville. “Been to Potter’s house a lot, have you? Funny, I’ve _never_ heard of you coming here.” 

Neville bit back a smile: earlier that week, Blaise had cast himself on the sofa, asked for some tea, and proceeded to outline the amount of information Draco provided him with about his love-life. Apparently, the first time Harry let Draco into Grimmauld’s place had happened earlier that day, and as soon as it was over, Draco had pretty much poured out his feelings all over Blaise’s room. This, Neville was told, was commonplace.

“Oh, hush,” Draco said smoothly, though he went very pink-cheeked.

Harry blinked. “I brought him here just a few days ago!”

“Hmmm,” Blaise shrugged. “It isn’t as if Draco tells me _everything_.” And then he laughed his little breathy laugh, half irony and half self-amusement, and Neville wanted to lean into him and kiss him all over again. Just, this time, with more communication, maybe.

But sex with Blaise _was_ nice, Neville thought, because it felt intimate, and because it was with Blaise. It was nice the same way he imagined grocery shopping for Blaise and himself would be: not that he craved or loved grocery shopping, but it would be nice because of who it was for, and what it meant. (Grocery shopping might be a little nicer because sex meant Neville was sexually attractive and grocery shopping was downright _domestic_ , but Neville took what he could get.)

Draco scowled half-heartedly. “Shut _up_ , Blaise. My telling you everything far better than _your_ telling me nothing at all. How long have you been dating Longbottom and conveniently forgot to tell me?”

“We’re not really,” Neville said fruitlessly, at the same time Blaise said, “We’re just friends who kiss, really.”

Draco looked like he might say something, his eyebrows drawing together. He didn’t know? It wasn’t as if that was much different than actually dating to Blaise. Right?

Harry turned to Draco, lips twisting in an amused, “You tell him everything? What’ll you if I fuck you?”

Draco choked on his food and flushed crimson. “I– I– I do hope you fuck me!” he blurted, and buried his face in his hands. “I mean… oh Salazar.” 

Neville looked away from both of them just as Blaise was also looking away from them. Their eyes met, and they shared an amused smile. It felt so simple and tangible and possible for half a second. It felt almost like it could happen, Neville and Blaise. 

It had been nearly two weeks since the first magical– if sudden and surprisingly fierce– kiss, and they’d been doing a lot of kissing. It had been really fun. And then they started having sex. And it hadn’t been bad. 

And maybe Neville had made promises with himself in the past, but it wasn’t as if he was sex _averse_ , he just didn’t have a sex _drive_. He could live with this. 

And really, sex _was_ nice. Because Blaise obviously enjoyed it very much. _Very much_. 

So everything was fine.

Mostly. Except it sort of felt like lying. Which it was, by omission, but that wasn’t quite a lie in Slytherins’ books, he thought, even if it was in his own Gryffindor code. 

“Gryffindors are too honest,” Blaise said a few days later, confirming Neville’s suspicions. “Even when it’s really no help.”

Neville wrinkled his forehead at Blaise and pressed closer to him on the park bench. “When is being honest not a help?”

“Plenty of times. Today Draco told me Harry told him, quote, ‘I’m not sure I can be with someone who has the Dark Mark, to be honest. I’m willing to try, but I don’t want you to think I’m promising anything.’”

Neville held out a stemless strawberry with an inquiring look and couldn’t help beaming when Blaise at it from his fingers, licking at the juice with a sly smile. He thought on this. “Harry didn’t meant to be hurtful. There’s no way he could know Draco’s already head-over-heels. I mean, they’ve gone on a couple dates? Just being transparent, which is important.” Was he hypocritical? A bit. Being part of a death cult was a bigger deal than being asexual, right?

“He already hadn’t made any promises. He didn’t have to clarify that he wasn’t making any.” Blaise scowled and Neville’s heart skipped a beat as he turned his head and kissed Neville’s cheek, pressing his face into Neville’s neck. “You don’t think you could be with a Death Eater, could you?” Whatever Blaise liked to say, he cared about his friends. Very much. 

“No,” Neville answered honestly, “Probably not. Slytherins don’t believe in lies by omission, then?” 

Blaise snorted. “Accusing someone of lying by omission is a weak accusation at best. Imagine if everyone said everything that was true at all times. Neville, the grass is green, and the trees are green, but the trunks are brown, and I’m going to fuck you tonight–”

Neville nearly dropped his sandwich. “ _Blaise!_ ”

“I didn’t say I’d suck your dick first, though, so is that a lie by omission? I didn’t say there are ants on this bench, is that a lie by omission?”

They were sitting with a small picnic under the shade of a tree, facing a large sunny meadow peppered with daisies. It looked like a film scene for a picnic, except the films never showed ants crawling up the bench and–

And crows, brutally killing a rat.

Neville flinched. “Godric save– I didn’t know– Blaise!” He didn’t know what Blaise would do about it, really. Blaise didn’t appear to be horrified; if anything, he looked morbidly curious. “Crows aren’t even birds of prey!”

“What’s a rat doing in a field?” Blaise pondered, still watching as the crow went for the neck of the still-alive rat again and again. “How long will it take to die? The beak can’t even fit around its neck.”

Neville looked away. “Strawberry? Do you want a sandwich maybe? How about half?”

He felt Blaise squeeze him. “Are you really that disturbed by it?” Blaise nuzzled his beard. If Neville had learned one thing over the past few weeks, it was that Blaise was relatively obsessed with his beard. “Give me that sandwich.”

Neville did, and Blaise immediately threw it at the crow. The crow squawked and jabbed at it before flying off with it in its beak. The rat ran off.

“Oh,” said Neville. “That was Nopkey’s ham sandwich.”

“Sorry.” Blaise shrugged, and Neville felt himself smile. 

“Thank you,” he said, and turned, and kissed Blaise soundly on the mouth. 

Kissing he actually did enjoy very much, and Blaise was a very good kisser. Neville tried not to think too much about _why_ Blaise was so good at kissing. For now, Blaise was unofficially his, and that was pretty phenomenal, all things considered. Except for the moments when Neville wondered things like _how long is this actually going to last? What do I even offer that his exes don’t have? Is that bloke sexy by Blaise’s standards? What about that one?_

“Hey,” he murmured against Blaise’s mouth when Blaise started kissing him onto his back. “There _are_ ants on this bench, and you’ll knock over the sandwiches.” The sandwiches were beside him on the bench, but since the kiss had turned them about a bit, they were behind him now.

“I’m not even eating the sandwiches,” Blaise said, but he leaned back and pulled Neville with him instead. “And I don’t give a fuck about the ants.”

“That’s very romantic of you.” Neville smiled down at him, braced above him on two arms. It put him in mind of their first kiss. “Have you eaten any of the sandwiches?”

“Kiss me and I will.”

Neville hovered. “I don’t want to make you– I mean, I really do want to kiss you. I don’t want to bribe you with kisses.”

Blaise rolled his eyes and yanked Neville down with an impatient little growl. “Hurry up,” he whispered against Neville’s lips, and Neville kissed him. Neville loved the feel of Blaise beneath him, warm and comforting, the secure embrace of Blaise’s strong arms looping up to pull him closer. It felt like they could fall asleep wrapped together. They would be halfway there, trading lazy kisses, if Blaise cooled down the kiss a bit. As it was, Blaise was kissing him like he wanted to take Neville’s soul out through his mouth. Neville didn’t mind it all that much.

Blaise’s hands swept down his back, and Neville sat up just a bit. “People are going to think we’re having sex in a public park.”

“You can’t have sex with your trousers still on,” Blaise snickered, running a finger over the edge of Neville’s waistband. 

“ _Blaise,_ ” Neville gasped, sitting further up. “Eat your sandwiches.”

“I was kidding, I was kidding.” Blaise ruffled Neville’s hair, and Neville’s chest felt as if it might burst. Blaise’s eyes were the kind of exasperated that felt entirely intimate and sweet, which Neville hadn’t even known was a thing until Blaise. “Here, give me the cucumber one.”

“Just cucumber? Ham and cheese? No?”

Blaise gave him a look, and Neville handed Blaise the cucumber one. “Thank you.”

Neville watched him eat. The sun had shifted in the afternoon sky, and they weren’t in the shade of the tree anymore; instead, the sunlight played off Blaise’s pretty brown eyes, shone through Blaise’s black, black eyelashes. He really could do modelling, if he wanted. Neville knew Blaise liked how he looked– not that he spent ages in front of a mirror, but he appreciated himself very much. It was actually very sweet. He was confident in a way Neville could never be, but he wasn’t mean about it, even if he teased a lot.

Neville liked the teasing. It made him want to burrow his face into Blaise’s admittedly fit chest and curl up with him, lazy afternoons and sly comments. All of it.

Blaise looked back at him. “Stop watching me eat.” He waved a hand between their faces. “You’ll put me off.”

Neville looked away. “You’re so pretty.”

He could hear Blaise’s smile in his voice. “Have another sandwich.” 

Neville leaned his shoulder into Blaise’s, laying his head into the crook of Blaise’s neck. Blaise smelled very strongly of cologne, and of roses. “It’s a really nice day.”

“When did you get so sappy?” Blaise turned his head and kissed Neville’s forehead. It was a good day. “Don’t be sappy with me. I have enough sap in my life.”

“The trees are very sappy.”

He could feel the vibrations of Blaise’s laugh in Blaise’s throat where his face was pressed to Blaise’s neck. “That’s– that’s not funny.” Blaise reached down and took Neville’s hand. He opened it, gently, and kissed the palm, chaste and quick. Today was a very, very good day. 

When they got home, to Neville’s little house, Blaise leaned against the doorway of the kitchen, scuffing his shoe rhythmically against the threshold. Neville could feel Blaise’s eyes on him as Neville made them both tea. “You can sit,” Neville offered, turning and raising his eyebrows. “I’m going to put the sugar.”

Blaise had the most peculiar look on his face– worried, but not quite, soft but not quite, an unidentifiable look in his eyes. “You like it when I eat, don’t you?”

Neville almost dropped the sugar bowl. He set it down with a lot less grace than Blaise would have managed and it clattered loudly against the counter. “I–” He turned, staring at Blaise, clutching at the edge of the counter. He was distantly aware that he looked like a guilty man. “No-o…” he tried.

Blaise’s mouth twisted, evidently unconvinced. “You don’t think I eat enough.” His gaze flickered to the sugar bowl.

Neville swallowed. How could he approach this in a good way? What was he going to say now? “I do,” he conceded. “Do you?” _What are you doing?_

Neville could hear the clock ticking and his own swallow as if amplified by the intensity of Blaise’s gaze.

“Let’s sit,” he offered, leaving the tea behind and pulling Blaise to the couch by the hand. “Come on. Sit.”

Blaise did, still looking at Neville carefully. Neville felt Blaise’s hand tighten on Neville’s own when he pulled away, and so he squeezed his hand and held on. Waited.

“I don’t eat much,” Blaise told their linked hands. He wasn’t moving smoothly the way he usually did; he wasn’t moving at all. “I’m not _unhealthy._ ” He looked up with a provocative grin that seemed a bit forced. “You’re fucking me, aren’t you?”

“I worry a bit all the same.” Neville ran his thumb over Blaise’s knuckles, watching Blaise’s eyes run over the bookshelf and follow the vine looping down the side of it from the pot on the fourth shelf. He liked to follow the path of it with his eyes when he was distressed, and Neville always took it as a sign to back off. “I’d never make you eat anything you didn’t want to,” he promised, “If you need to hear it. And I won’t be upset at you for not eating anything.” He cupped Blaise’s face and kissed his chin, his heart aching and fluttering wildly all at once. Blaise Zabini, holding hands with him on Neville’s couch and talking willingly about eating. 

“I know that,” Blaise assured him, meeting his eyes. “You’re too kind to do anything like that.”

“Oh, Blaise.”

The ends of Blaise’s mouth tugged up. “You’re blushing.”

“Stop it,” Neville laughed, his face flushing even harder. He put his palms against his cheeks. “I am _not_.”

“Don’t cover your face, you’re adorable when you blush.” Blaise tugged on Neville’s wrists, his fingers long and cool around his forearm. “You’re the kindest person I know. That’s not even worth blushing at.”

“It’s nice to hear.”

“Most people blush when someone tells them they’re cute or something.”

Neville leaned over and kissed Blaise’s cheek. He was becoming very fond of chaste cheek kisses; they felt so incredibly sweet and caring. “I mean, that’s nice too.”

Blaise smirked. “Do you have a praise kink or something?”

Neville slapped his shoulder. “ _No!_ Not everything’s about sex!”

The television wasn’t on; Neville didn’t usually put it on with Blaise. This made the room feel very quiet. Birds chirped through the window. When had they become so awkward? Neville had fallen in love with Blaise before they became really, really close friends, and he hadn’t been this awkward before. He didn’t think, at least. Even though it had just been the two of them sometimes, they’d been able to fill the silences effortlessly. Now they kept falling into silent spells, stumbling into invisible barriers in conversation, crossing unspoken lines so vaguely drawn they were hard to make out and easy to forget. 

“I meant– not everything is about sex,” Neville attempted to explain, and Blaise laughed lightly, an easy smirk on the edges of his mouth. “Just, I didn’t mean to say it so loudly. Can’t I just enjoy a compliment?” 

“I didn’t mean to…” Blaise ran his gaze over Neville’s face, his perfectly manicured fingernail tracing his own jaw idly. Neville squirmed, feeling studied very closely. “Do you really mind? I can stop, it’s just…” he shrugged, still moving smoothly, still watching Neville’s face. “I’m usually like this, you know.”

Neville smiled in spite of himself, feeling oddly noticed. “I know,” he murmured, pulling Blaise into his arms. Blaise was so warm, solid in his arms. “I don’t _mind_ really, it’s just so…”

Blaise tipped his head up to look at Neville, his shoulder pressed into the soft bulge of Neville’s stomach and his head on Neville’s chest. “Scandalous?” he supplied.

“Yeah.” Neville grinned and ran a hand up and down Blaise’s back slowly. He enjoyed the curve of Blaise’s back, the warmth. 

Blaise laid his head back down. 

This silence wasn’t bad at all; it was relaxed, natural, easy. Blaise’s breath was steady, rising and falling in sync with Neville’s own breathing, his head lifting just slightly every time Neville breathed in and out. Neville knew Blaise could hear his heartbeat and didn’t worry about it too much because his heart wasn’t racing anymore; if anything he could drift to sleep like this. The idea of Blaise listening to his heartbeat would be a lovely thought to fall asleep to.

Blaise shifted his weight, his bony shoulder digging into Neville’s stomach for a moment and evoking an involuntary squeak from Neville, and when he stopped shifting he was lying more flat as if he, too, felt like falling asleep in the middle of the afternoon with Neville, instead of their normal thing, where Blaise dragged Neville to the bedroom after tea, or before tea, or pulled Neville over him right there on the couch until the tea had gone cold.

“I feel better about myself when I eat less,” Blaise murmured so quietly into Neville’s chest he half-thought he’d imagined it. “Don’t tell me that’s a bad thing, Longbottom.”

Neville resumed running his hand over Blaise’s back, his heartbeat speeding up. He stopped drifting off; he couldn’t believe he’d been on the edge of sleep just a moment ago. “I’m not really an expert on the right way to eat or how much to eat. You could talk to someone who really knows what’s good and bad. All I do is eat when I’m hungry, or if I see something I’d like to eat, and I’m doing fine.”

Blaise hummed, the vibrations travelling from his throat and spreading through Neville’s chest, and lifted his hand up; Neville, with his head propped up against the arm of the couch with a pillow, watched Blaise fumble lazily for his hand and clasped it firmly, running his thumb over it again the way he knew Blaise liked. “I don’t want to talk to an expert, I want to talk to you.”

“I don’t have a medical degree.”

He felt Blaise’s body tense against his own, the heartbeat pressed to his stomach kicking up. “I don’t need a bloody diagnosis, fuck you.”

Neville’s stomach sunk. “Hey,” he murmured, tracing circles onto Blaise’s back in what he hoped was comforting. “It’s okay, alright? I didn’t mean anything by it. I just want you to take what I say with a grain of salt.”

“Not a sandwich?”

“Or a bowl of soup.” 

Blaise smiled. “Too filling,” he joked, and let his smile fade, unusually serious. “I _am_ trying to eat more.”

“You ate a whole sandwich today.” 

Blaise had, quietly and refusing to cuddle with Neville until he’d finished eating it and followed it with water. Neville had been careful not to watch, but there wasn’t any bread or cucumber on the ground afterwards, and there weren’t any birds after Blaise got the rat-eating crow to leave. 

“Well.” Blaise looked up at him again, squeezing Neville’s hand. His eyes were always so pretty– this afternoon Neville had been so certain that those brown eyes looked the prettiest lit in the sunlight, making them look like jewels, but now he was sure they looked best in the shade, so dark it almost looked as if his eyes were black. “I always feel better about eating around you.” 

They were both in the shadow of the back of the couch, but the rest of the room was lit by sunlight. Rays glinted off the bare coffee table that they usually drank tea on. Neville had left the teacups with the teabags still in them, water now gone cold, no doubt, and the sugar bowl on the counter. 

“Oh,” said Neville, gently running his hand over the back of Blaise’s head and thinking he was very, irrevocably in love. After every haircut Blaise got, his head was always a bit scratchy and sharp on the edges, but now it had been weeks since the last time he’d gone to the barber’s and his hair was the softest thing Neville had ever felt. He loved running his fingers through it. This was one of the advantages of dating Blaise; he’d never known until now how much perfection could exist in one head of tight, closely shorn curls.

“I feel better about a lot of things around you.” Blaise was smiling so, so tenderly at him. He could almost imagine they were the only people in the entire world. Did Blaise feel this too? This intangible magic between them?

“I’m so glad,” Neville whispered. He felt like it wasn’t nearly enough, but he meant it with all his heart.

Blaise pressed his face into Neville’s chest and breathed deep. 

Rise, fall.

“Yeah,” he murmured. Neville could feel Blaise’s jaw moving against him, a little bit uncomfortable and so perfect. “Me too.”

They did fall asleep on Neville’s couch. Without even having sex.

When they woke up, Blaise tutted at their “sexual negligence” but he did it so playfully Neville found himself laughing anyway, tugging on Blaise’s shirt. 

“Get up, please, I’ve got a kink in my back.”

Blaise burst out laughing. Neville loved this laugh, one he rarely heard from Blaise and pretty much never when they were with other people. Open and unfettered, empty of judgement or irony. It was loud, and a little bit raspy, something unusual for Blaise’s achingly smooth voice. “A _what_?” He shook his head. “What an unfortunate choice of words.”

Blaise did sit up, though, after finding a place to place his hand on the couch to push his body up. Neville, lying on the couch, was about as wide as the couch itself, which was just as well, because then Blaise’s brace ended up being over Neville’s shoulder, and this put him a perfect position to kiss. He had a bit of a pattern of creases on his cheek from Neville’s sweater-vest. Blaise hated Neville’s sweater-vests; he said they were the worst thing fashion had ever thought up, even worse than the men’s fashion’s obsession with leather pants, which he found horrendous. Neville loved them; they were warm and soft.

“Did you still want that tea?”

They both looked out the window at the late afternoon sun, dipped below the tops of the houses, the trees on the streets casting long shadows.

“What time is it?”

Neville cast a Tempus. “I– _half-seven_.”

“Half seven? It’s astonishingly bright for half-seven.”

“Days do get longer when we get closer to summer.”

“You nerd.”

Neville laughed. “I mean, there’s never a wrong time for tea, if you’ll stay a bit longer. I mean, I’d like you to stay a bit longer.”

“You’ve got a bed and a body. I’d like to stay forever.” Blaise laughed strangely, looking at Neville, and Neville tried to laugh, too. Did Blaise joke like this with all the boys he dated? It sounded unbelievably attached for someone who didn’t care about what someone was like inside except in the sexual sense… Neville didn’t have the energy to think about it, not with all the energy it took to not die, or take Blaise into his arms and beg him to mean it. “I’ll settle for dinner.”

“I wouldn’t mind forever,” Neville responded finally, trying to sound like he was going along with the joke and not stupidly, pathetically earnest. He shrugged like everything was normal. Everything _was_ normal. He was just being weird, wasn’t he? Reading into things too much? “I’ve also got a beard and some biscuits and bread if we’re naming things with B.”

“Well if that’s what we’re going for, you’ve got me.”

_Blaise._ Neville was stumbling forward before he could think on it, catching the front of Blaise’s shirt in his fists in a heartbeat, and kissed him and kissed him and kissed him, open-mouthed and sweet, earnest and everything he wanted to say and Blaise didn’t want to hear.

How had he thought everything was okay? Nothing was okay. ‘ _Lying by omission is a weak accusation’ my arse._ He loved Blaise so hard, not saying it was a blatant lie by omission. The biggest lie Neville had ever told.

And one he didn’t think he’d have the bravery to set straight any time soon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How did this get so fluffy? Don't ask me. I have no idea.


	5. Asexual Neville?!?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What has been coming comes. And no, it's nothing sexual. It's decidedly _not_ sexual.

**Blaise**

“So. Longbottom.” Draco peered over at him, Vanishing the book he’d been reading with a flourish extremely unnecessarily; he had a table right in front of him. 

“I’m trying photography,” Blaise told him, although Neville was much more informed about Blaise’s search for a hobby than Draco. Any diversion would do.

Unfortunately, it didn’t work.

“Longbottom,” Draco repeated again.

Fucking Neville was a very confusing experience. He wanted more– Blaise hadn’t ever wanted _more_ than an extremely frequent tumble in the sheets from any of his other partners.

But they also _had_ more. They were dating in every sense except for the label, and they were close as friends got without getting married. _Married._ Merlin, Blaise shut that thought down immediately. He had Neville gasping and willing and he couldn’t even muster up the courage to ask him if perhaps one day he’d consider going out with Blaise, maybe. They were never going to get _married._ Salazar.

“It’s fine. It’s great. How’s Potter?”

This was, as always, only a diversion. He knew exactly how it had gone with Potter– they had all heard it. Draco, curled on the couch, Potter wrapped around him; Pansy, shifting restlessly on the stiff armchair, Blaise watching with interest as Draco’s cheeks flushed deeper and deeper, and Potter kept attempting to play with Draco’s hands, pushing up the sleeves of Draco’s sweater. Draco had been a wuss, to put it plainly. In the end, Blaise had explained, “He doesn’t want you to see his Dark Mark.” 

And Draco had jumped up, and Potter had grabbed him clumsily, and kissed Draco’s wrist, and Neville had such a sappy, affectionate look for both of them that Blaise thought he might fall to pieces at it. 

“Stop smiling,” Blaise had scolded half-heartedly. 

“They’re so sweet,” Neville had murmured, and looked at Blaise, biting his lip, and then Blaise and Neville had left.

And Blaise let Neville convince him to watch some sappy show on the telly. He ended up leaning into Neville, eating popcorn without a thought and resting his head on Neville’s shoulder, weaving their fingers together like a teenage couple in Hogsmede.

They kissed and Blaise licked the butter off of Neville’s fingers and they did not finish the movie.

It was so _strange_ with Neville in bed. Outside of bed. Everywhere, really. They way Neville looked at him, and reached for him, and touched him. Nothing ever felt particularly hungry. Just… well, _willing_. But Neville also seemed so happy with Blaise by his side. It was a bloody mess. Blaise was likely being overly analytical.

“I think I’m too obvious,” Draco confessed now, staring at the corner of the table. “I almost _cried_ today, do you understand? All he did was–” his voice wobbled. “He kissed– kissed– _it_.”

Blaise grinned and stirred his tea, watching Draco’s eyes go red. The sugar bowl sat on the table, glinting at him in the light shining from the Muggle lighting fixture that Draco’s apartment had. It was really strange and unnatural, different from torches on walls. Blaise wondered if he really liked the natural sunlight of Neville’s house or if he was biased. He was probably biased. Dangerously so. He’d thought about _marriage_ , for Salazar’s sake.

“Are we talking about me?”

Draco dropped his teacup and it spilt all over his little table. The teacup, thankfully, didn’t shatter.

Blaise snickered and Vanished the mess, turning to see Harry Potter standing in the doorway, twirling his wand about. Gryffindors all seemed to have the same sort of pleased, bashfully flattered expression. Draco was so focused on him, Blaise was able to add a bit of sugar to his tea without anyone knowing, seeing as Potter’s heart eyes were getting worse every day, and he felt slightly less affected by the idea of sugar when no one else knew he was consuming it. 

“No!” Draco looked up at him, alarmed, cradling his now empty teacup. “We were _not_. We were talking about Longbottom.”

Blaise glared at Draco as Potter walked past him to take a seat next to Draco. Draco’s apartment was small, and so his furniture was small. Blaise took a small, vindictive pleasure in watching Draco swallow and try not to look like he was freaking out as Potter gestured him up and tugged Draco down into his lap. “We were _not_ ,” he said, which technically was true, if the timeframe was well-cropped. _Well cropped._ “Did I mention I’ve taken up photography?”

This bit was ignored.

“We _were._ They aren’t dating.”

Blaise tutted. “Potter, you really shouldn’t date a guy like that. He throws his friends under the bus.”

“ _Blaise!_ ”

Potter just smiled and stroked Draco’s side absentmindedly. “What do you mean you aren’t dating? You’re the sweetest couple I know–” He froze, looking sharply at Blaise. “You didn’t break up with him, did you?”

Blaise scoffed. “I’m not that stupid, Potter.”

“He’s _more_ stupid,” Draco clarified.

“Sorry, can you get your pet Malfoy to shut his mouth a moment please?”

Potter blinked and looked at Draco speculatively. “What were you saying, love?”

Draco grinned smugly and leaned his head back onto Potter’s shoulder. 

Blaise sighed loudly. 

“He never asked him out in the first place. Can you believe it?”

It was somehow different for Potter to be staring at him like that– Draco had been judging him for a very long time, but Potter was not usually extremely disturbed by how other people lived. The look Potter gave him now made him feel if he’d done Neville a great wrong. Blaise had been the protective friend countless times– even to Potter on behalf of Draco. He’d never been on the other end of it before. He didn’t appreciate it.

“What’s going on with you two, then?”

“I…” Potter looked like he already knew. “You know. We’re having fun.”

“ _Having fun_?”

Blaise flinched at Potter’s tone. He looked ready to attack. Draco said Potter’s anger was really hot and Blaise found he disagreed very much; he was not turned on. 

He was a little terrified. 

“I don’t– it’s not a big deal, Potter, chill the fuck out.”

“What, exactly, does _having fun_ mean?” Potter’s eyes were burning like fire and even Draco looked confused now. “Explain.”

Draco twisted in Potter’s lap with a worried expression. “Darling–” he faltered. _Come on,_ Blaise begged him mentally, _friends before sex. Please._ “What’s wrong?”

Blaise blew out a breath. Better than nothing, he supposed. “Why are you obsessed with my sex life, Potter? I have it on good authority that Draco will bend over for you at any moment you wish.”

Draco sat up very straight, flushing deeply. “What happened to not throwing your friends under the bus?”

“You’re the one who sicced your boyfriend on me,” Blaise shot back. 

Potter was still staring at him. “Your sex life,” he echoed. “Your _sex_ life?”

“Potter, I don’t see what Blaise Zabini’s sex life has to do with you either,” Draco muttered, scowling.

Blaise shifted uncomfortably again; what was Potter’s deal? “It’s just a little fun, alright? What do you want?” He had been planning to drink his tea– after all, he’d felt alright with taking a biscuit, even, if he thought about Neville while he did. Now all he wanted was a way to leave this fucking conversation as smoothly and as soon as possible.

Potter’s eyes flashed– yeah, definitely more dangerous than sexy. “Because if Blaise Zabini is stringing Neville along–”

“Oh, please, as if I’d _ever_ – I’m fucking in love with him, alright?” Blaise burst out. 

Oh. 

_Oh,_ bloody hell, why did he have to come out with that? With Draco and Potter both staring at him, here? Now?

“Just, step off,” he mumbled, feeling like he might sick up all over Draco’s table. He set down his teacup. “I’m going to leave now, if you’re done with the interrogation, Auror Potter?” His hands were shaking so hard, the teacup clattered against the saucer. 

Potter didn’t respond for a moment. Blaise didn’t need him to; he made his way to the door on his own.

“Blaise–” Potter said as Blaise was reaching for the door.

“Fuck all the way off,” Blaise bit out. “You can forget I said that. Please.”

There was a thump indicating that Draco had been dumped on the floor. “Blaise. You’re not kidding, are you?”

“Or you can go fuck Draco, I’m sure he’d enjoy it.”

“Blaise!” Potter all but shouted. “You need to talk to Neville. Honestly. About how you– about–” he blew out a breath. “Just talk to him. I think you should– at least ask him out.”

“Excuse me, I don’t work for you.”

“Too fucking bad. He’s my friend,” Potter said fiercely. Blaise flinched at the words– he’d said the same thing when he’d pleaded with Potter just two months ago to be careful with Draco. _I think I have the right to be cautious about him,_ Potter had said. _Too fucking bad, he’s my friend,_ Blaise had said in response.

“I–” Blaise looked to Draco for help. Draco just shook his head and shrugged, looking in awe at Potter’s back. Bloody traitor. “No promises. You can’t quote me saying I agreed.”

“Fucking hell, are all Slytherins hung up on the little details like that?” Potter ran his hand through his hair. “All I’m saying is don’t _lie_ about how you feel about someone if you _know_ they care about you.”

“Whatever,” Blaise snapped back, “Maybe _you_ should have a conve–”

“Okay, _shut the fuck up and leave,_ ” Draco shouted, shoving himself past Potter and then shoving Blaise out the door to the apartment. 

Blaise was only too happy to comply.

Neville had a potted plant in his hands when Blaise showed up at his house, considering his bookshelf carefully. “Hello,” he said without turning around, which gave Blaise a small flame in his heart– it felt so homey here– _to him_. 

The urge to take a dozen pictures of this place, this place that Neville called home, swept Blaise up with a surprise amount of force. He didn’t think he’d care all that much about pictures, but he really liked things that looked nice, and nothing was nicer than the way Neville looked in this house, comfortable and home, smiling at the countless plants around him, relaxed and happy and perfect.

He could live here, help Neville pick a place for the new plant, talk Neville down from plant-buying splurges, because Neville always shook his head at himself, saying next time he’d manage to find a little self control, he swore.

“I bought another couple plants, but who’s surprised?”

Blaise laughed shakily, the two halves of his world at odds. On the one hand, Neville had no idea Blaise was in love with him. On the other half of the world– everyone else– that knowledge was out there for the finding, even if not everyone knew it yet. And while Neville was special and different from everyone else to Blaise, he wasn’t separate. If anything, he had more friends than Blaise, despite his innately shy nature. The two halves of Blaise’s world were unbalanced, and Blaise wasn’t eager to see when they collided. 

“I’m not,” Blaise said.

“Well, next time you will be,” Nevile laughed at himself; they both knew it wasn’t true. “I’ll manage to keep my hands to myself next time, I’m sure.”

“Plant kink…” Blaise sing-songed under his breath, and Neville turned then, his cheeks pink and his mouth turned up in a smile.

“ _Hey!_ ” he protested, but with no real animosity. “Shut _up_. Help me find a place with moderate sunlight.”

“You don’t even have space in here.” Blaise waved his hand around– the couch, the windowsill behind it full of potted plants lined up one next to the other, the bookshelf of potted plants, the hanging pots from the ceiling near the dining area that merged with the living space. “You’ll have to get your own personal greenhouse.”

Neville shook his head. “And get rid of my garden? Not in a million years.”

“No, just buy more land. The lot behind you is empty-ish.” It was owned, technically, but it was bare and there weren’t any houses over there. “Whoever owns it isn’t the kind of person who cares much of it, if the dusty grey-brown dirt has anything to say about it.” Blaise shook his head. “Listen to me, talking about unhealthy soil. You’ve got me all domesticated, Longbottom.”

The bookshelf _was_ full, but there was a short one near the back that only needed little sunlight. Blaise reached down and lifted it up and over. “Put it here.”

“Little sunlight?”

“Yeah. That one’s taller, though, it’ll get what it needs.”

“Perfect,” Neville said, but he wasn’t looking at the plant. He was looking at Blaise.

Blaise felt as if his heart might expand to fit the entirety of London, it was so full. “Last time I was here, I ate a whole meal.” He looked away. “Let’s see if we can keep up the streak, yeah?” He wandered off to the kitchen as casually as he could, listening for Neville’s footsteps, the sound of Neville’s weight against the old couch. 

The kitchen had a few little succulents on the window ledge, and when Blaise looked in the cabinets, he easily spotted Neville’s plastic plates, with a big green leaf in the center. Neville never used them; he thought they were for children and cheesy besides. Blaise agreed, but he thought it was unbearably endearing that Neville held onto them anyway.

He let his head fall against the cabinet with a thunk. When had he gotten himself this deep in shit to sort out? That he was in love with Neville, that he was having sex with Neville, that somewhere inside him he wanted to _live_ with Neville, spend the rest of his stupid pathetic _life_ with Neville, that he wasn’t even _dating_ Neville because he was such a coward, that Harry Potter, Neville’s next best friend knew _all_ of this and would keep his mouth shut for who-knew-how-long before releasing it to the who-knew-who who-knew-when…

What was even happening to him? It had been, what, a month since he broke up with Goldstien? Two? He couldn’t even remember, but he knew his love for Neville went long before that, and he’d been able to keep damage control vigilantly until now.

“Blaise?” Neville called from the living room, “Are you alright in there? Do you need help finding something?”

Blaise loved even that, the small ways Neville knew him, like how he knew intuitively Blaise would rather pick food himself for the both of them than have someone watch him, judging him as he compiled a meal. 

He pulled out the leaf-plates, a salad from the fridge that had enough left over from what was probably yesterday’s lunch, and a plate of sandwiches. He set the former items down and inspected the sandwiches. They were cucumber. A little note taped to the bottom read: “ _Blaise likes cucumber sandwiches. Make more of these. See also: strawberries.”_

Blaise loved Neville’s handwriting, the letters rounded and certain, with no air of sophistication. Easy to read, unpresuming, and frankly, enjoyable to look at. He checked the fruit drawer of the fridge. Strawberries, three whole baskets of them.

Neville was slowly killing Blaise and he had _no idea._ Neville just _was_. And because Neville was, Blaise many other things. In love. Randy. Aching and wishful and wanting and terrified and jealous of everyone brave and an absolute wreck. 

Blaise brought all of them out.

“Oh, good, you’re okay,” Neville said with a smile, one that Blaise wished he could snap a picture of, and Blaise felt himself smile goofily back, even as he realized with embarrassment that he’d never responded to Neville’s initial call.

_You,_ he thought _you have no idea what an absolute fool I am for you._ He didn’t say it. He said: “You’re such a sap, Nev. The fuck is this?” 

He set out the lunch food, delighting in the way Neville’s eyes widened and his cheeks went pink.

“It’s… my quest to get you to eat more,” Neville confessed, his eyes crinkling in the corners. “I wasn’t going to force-feed you or anything, I swear. I just wanted to make sure if you ever wanted to eat something, I’d have something you felt good about eating.”

Blaise found himself thinking he very much wanted to take care of Neville in return and nearly dropped his head and groaned out loud. He didn’t, but it must’ve shown on his face, because Neville looked concerned.

“Something wrong? I didn’t mean anything by it, Blaise, I mean it.”

_I can’t take care of you,_ Blaise thought, looking at Neville’s worried blue eyes, his lips pressed tight. _There isn’t anything wrong with you for me to take care of._

“Potter said we should talk,” he blurted out. He barely managed to hold in _about how I’m in love with you._ Bloody _hell_. He wasn’t even drunk or anything. He was just, just. Affected by Neville’s presence, which was the most pathetic thing he’d ever heard. “I told him we weren’t dating and…”

Neville’s face had paled, the faint freckles on his cheeks all the more visible. “What would we talk about? Did you– I mean, you didn’t say we were having sex, did you?” Even the mention of sex failed to bring color back to Neville’s cheeks.

Blaise’s heartbeat stopped. He got the feeling something was wrong. Possibly, very wrong. Who knew? Not him. The world was upside-down. “The whole world knows we’re having sex, Neville,” he said as gently as he could.

“Do they?” Neville pushed a hand through his hair. “I guess it was obvious to anyone, since you’re you–” he said this bit matter-of-factly, as if Blaise was just naturally someone who always was having sex. “But I don’t know, I don’t think Harry really knew.”

“You didn’t tell your best mate we’re fucking? How long has it been?” Blaise didn’t actually need to ask- they were coming up to the end of his two extra weeks, granted graciously by Draco, that he had to ask Neville out properly, and Draco had made it very clear that _sex_ did _not_ count. 

“You’re my best mate.” Neville frowned, still watching Blaise carefully. Blaise took a cucumber sandwich to further emphasise that he didn’t have a problem with Neville stocking up on food he liked. He looked as if he might say something else, but he didn’t. Instead, he took some food himself, staring at the blank, black screen of the telly, which was never a good sign.

“You’re not telling me something,” Blaise realized. Neville wasn’t looking at him, and his pale face and his nibbling told Blaise everything. 

Neville never nibbled. He ate steadily, as he did everything else, much like everyone else who ate. Blaise was the only person he knew whose default eating was nibbling, only when Neville ate the regular way it was somehow a wonderful thing, even though it was so normal. His swallow, the bob of his throat, the way he didn’t mind that Blaise didn’t eat anything, the way other people did. Just offered him food like a normal person, and shrugged and said _okay_ if Blaise declined, which made Blaise so much more inclined to _not_ decline.

“Neville.” Blaise pushed his shoulder against Neville’s, smiling just a little bit so that Neville would know he wouldn’t be upset, whatever it was, but that he wasn’t teasing, either. “Come on. Out with it. You’re much too honest for this sort of secrecy.”

Neville turned to look at him, shifting on his couch and pulling away from Blaise a little. “I dunno if you’ll just forget about it if I ask you to?”

“I wouldn’t do, no.” The way Neville was looking at him made something cold reach up Blaise’s spine, curling icy tendrils of dread around his heart. What was it? 

He found himself setting down his half-eaten cucumber sandwich, reaching for Neville’s hands. “I won’t get angry with you, if that’s what you’re worried about. I don’t think there’s anything in the world you could do that would make me angry at you.” It was true, but entirely too sappy. Blaise felt his face go warm just saying the words aloud to Neville’s face, just admitting it to the open air, that he was so hopeless for this man that nothing could drive him away, not ever, he was sure.

Neville squeezed his hands lightly, once, and pulled them away. “I think– I don’t think. I know why Harry was so upset at you.”

Blaise tried not to miss the warmth of Neville’s hands too badly, but the weight of them, the sure feel of them in his own was so wonderful, always so wonderful, and he never stopped missing Neville’s skin against his own when he didn’t have it. “I didn’t say he was upset with me. He just wanted us to talk, that’s all.”

Neville laughed softly. “You’ve got it all written over your face. You always get upset when my friends are angry with you, and you’ve looked like you’ve seen a ghost all afternoon.”

Blaise swallowed. Neville knew him well, yeah, but he’d really thought he’d had a bit of a facade going- he wasn’t sure whether to be a little unhappy with himself that he was obviously easier to read than he thought, or to be a little happy that Neville knew him inside and out. His heart fluttered a little, anyway.

“Are you going to tell me or are we keeping secrets now?” Blaise asked, this time a little more teasingly, because the room was uncomfortably quiet, and Neville’s eyebrows had drawn together unhappily. “You know I care about you, right? Whatever it is…”

He trailed off, but Neville didn’t fill the silence. He was watching Blaise apprehensively, but also intently, as if trying to drink him all up through his eyes and expected Blaise to disappear into thin air at any moment.

“You’re really starting to worry me, you know,” he tried joking. “You’re not exactly the stolid, mysterious type. Inconsiderate of you to make me worry this much. What did you do, murder someone?”

Neville smiled in a way that looked a little more like a wince. “No, it’s not that. It’s about you having sex with me, acutally.”

“Huh,” Blaise said. He didn’t know what to say to that– he wasn’t _bad_ at sex, he knew. Actually, he knew he was very good at sex, but maybe Neville had some sort of sex-skeleton in the closet like, oh, he didn’t know. “Are you, like, an extremely guilty sadist or something?”

“ _No_ ,” Neville denied vehemently, “I am _not_. Do I look like– why would you think– I’m most certainly _not_ – I don’t enjoy hurting people.”

Blaise shrugged. “I figured if there was one person who would be this guilty about a sexual proclivity it would be you.”

“Well.” Neville shifted, and Blaise waited, wishing he could reach out and pull Neville into his arms. 

Whatever was wrong, they could forget about it, and Blaise would take him wherever he liked, whatever garden he wanted to see, to distract Neville from whatever was upsetting him so much. He’d pull out his Muggle camera and show Neville all the pictures on it, even though the collection was rather embarrassing. 

“It is a sexual proclivity, I guess. Or.” 

Neville looked at Blaise. Blaise looked back.

“I- Or mostly basically. A- A lack of sexual proclivity.”

What did that even mean? Neville said the last bit very significantly, but Blaise was having a hard time figuring out what he was really trying to say. A lack of sexual proclivity? 

...Oh. _Oh Merlin’s fucking beard._ “You’re asexual,” Blaise said, just to spell it out, just to make _absolutely sure_ –

“Yes, I– yeah.”

Blaise was standing up before he registered his own movement, upsetting the plate of cucumber sandwiches and nearly knocking over the bowl of strawberries too, as he bumped into the table. A wild tangle of feelings burst in his stomach like rapidly growing vines of guilt and horror twisting over and around each other in their contest to choke him first.

Neville jumped at his movement, but didn’t look all that surprised as Blaise fumbled his way to the door.

He needed to get out of here, to go somewhere where he could fall apart and freak out and think and feel and not have to look at Neville and face the growing, gnawing question in Blaise’s mind. 

He needed to _leave_. 

Anywhere but here, anywhere where he could untangle this– _Neville was asexual._

“Right. I’ll just. I should go. I need to- I’ll see you later, alright–” 

By some miracle, Blaise made it to the door and managed to open it without falling down. 

He wasn’t thinking all that much. It was too much to unpack, but there were a lot of ill-timed memories surfacing, just at the worst moment for him to recall them. No force of will could banish them from his mind. 

Neville on his back, his face twisted in pleasure, Neville over him, Neville with his hands in Blaise’s hair, Blaise on his knees, beds and couches and Blaise’s blank modern-magazine furniture with come down the side of it.

Neville watched him leave without a word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, what was that? Some angst? Can you believe it? I hardly can.


	6. Asexual Neville

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sulking and sadness on all sides. And then other stuff, too. Talking would be good, wouldn't it? Neville talks about it... with Harry, at least.

**Neville**

“What did you _say_ to him?” Neville demanded, bursting into the room. Harry was alone, flicking through a thick book that must’ve been Hermione’s disinterestedly, and he looked up when Neville came in with a guilty expression, like he’d been expecting him.

“I hear Blaise is freaking out,” Harry told Neville, as if Neville didn’t already know. 

He’d _been_ the one to freak him out, actually, and the horrible expression on Blaise’s face was something he’d probably never unsee.

“What did you say? He was so, he was so _off,_ ” Neville tried to explain, “like you upset him a lot, somehow.”

“Well, it was more what he said,” Harry said awkwardly, “But I think it’s the kind of thing you ought to hear from him first. I think he didn’t mean to say it, and he freaked himself out a little, saying it.”

Neville hadn’t sat down, and Harry was looking up at him awkwardly from the couch, so it was a relief when Harry stood. Kreacher popped in quickly, offering a plate of biscuits, but Neville waved him away politely, focusing on Harry. 

Harry looked happy, like maybe he’d been spending a lot of time with Draco lately, and Neville’s heart gave a pang– Draco and Harry hadn’t even had sex yet, and they were so happy. It was the reverse image of what he and Blaise had been, though he _had_ been happy, if a little uncomfortable the whole time, because of The Thing he wasn’t saying.

“He kept asking me if there was something I should tell him. I can’t imagine where that idea must’ve come from,” Neville said pointedly, and Harry flushed, biting his lip. “I knew it,” Neville muttered.

“I didn’t mean to _make_ you say anything,” Harry said anxiously, “I just, I was afraid he was– you know. Leading you on, or that you hadn’t told him and he wanted just sex, and you were alright with that because of how you– er. Feel?”

Neville sat himself down, running a hand through his hair, feeling distinctly miserable. “Actually, that’s. Um, that’s what was happening.”

Harry let out a heavy sigh, sounding not the least bit surprised. Neville wasn’t sure if this was a testament to his obvious inability to advocate for himself or his obvious inability to resist any sort of _anything_ with Blaise, even if it meant not telling Blaise something that was very relevant.

“I guess I wasn’t off, then.” Harry looked at him hard. “Really, Neville, if I forced you out I’m really, truly sorry.”

Neville shook his head. “No, I– It was my choice. And it was long overdue.”

“Well, I don’t know about _that_ ,” Harry objected, “You don’t owe it to anyone to tell them you’re ace until you’re ready.”

Neville fiddled with his sleeve, heat rising to his cheeks. “I was ready,” he admitted, “It was really just about keeping Blaise.”

“Ah,” said Harry, who didn’t seem to have anything to say to that. 

Neville sighed and dropped his head back onto the back of the couch, staring up at the high ceiling of Grimmauld Place and admiring how Harry had managed to turn it into so much of a brighter place than it had been before with a couple coats of white paint. 

“I guess you heard he’s upset because of Draco?”

Harry turned pink, smiling to himself slightly, and Neville found himself smiling to himself a little bit, too– Harry deserved to be happy after all of the things he’d gone through in their school years. “Yeah. Blaise is a mess, I hear.”

Neville straightened up quickly. “ _He’s_ a mess? He’s the one who just– _left._ ”

Harry’s mouth went flat and tight, his eyes flashing. This was the Harry Potter the world revered, and Neville felt a little honored every time Harry got upset on his part. “He _left_?”

“Yeah. Just,” Neville waved a hand listlessly– “Poof. Out the door.”

Harry sat forward, his eyes focused intently on Neville. “Tell me?”

Neville went back to looking at the ceiling, wishing he and Blaise could go back a month and not do– whatever they had been doing. Hanging out and having sex? “There’s nothing to _tell_ ,” he groaned. “He asked me if there was something I should tell him– thanks again– and he could tell I wasn’t saying something once he asked, so– I told him. And he just.” Neville pushed a hand over his eyes. “You should’ve seen his _face_ , Harry. Like he couldn’t even imagine– like I’d just announced I had a terminal illness or something.”

“Well,” Harry decided forcefully, “Fuck him, then. If someone can’t love you with your asexuality, they can shove it up their own goddamn arse.”

“Yeah,” Neville agreed without enthusiasm. He’d been telling himself the same thing all throughout the past few days, and it hadn’t really sunk in. He didn’t _feel_ like tossing Blaise out of his heart and mind, even though he agreed, in his mind at least, on the principle of not feeling bad about losing someone over a reason that really just came down to acceptance. It just hit different when it was Neville and Blaise. “I just. I really thought he cared, you know?”

“Oh,” Harry said curiously, “He cared alright.”

“Huh,” said Neville. 

He only felt worse thinking about it. About the sunlit picnics they’d have, the gardens they went to, the kisses and hugs, cuddling on the couch and watching rom-coms where Blaise would roll his eyes and nature documentaries where Neville would cry. 

“Hey, what’s going on with you and Draco?” he asked, very un-subtly. 

“Ha.” Harry stood up and wandered off, waving his hand about, and Neville followed him to the kitchen where Harry had wandlessly begun to make tea. “That’s not working on me. But, for your information, Draco’s got an eye on Blaise, and he doesn’t seem to be upset with Blaise for whatever he’s been up to.”

“Should he be?” Neville sighed as Harry poured out a steaming cup of tea, and when Harry raised an eyebrow at him, he nodded at the cabinet. “Whatchya got?”

“Peach, chamomile, Earl Grey…” 

Neville grinned, pulling down the chamomile. “You don’t drink Earl Grey.”

Harry flushed, smiling sheepishly. “Well… I think Draco mentioned he came here?”

Neville found it in himself to be happy, inspite of everything else (Blaise, really. Blaise was everything else). “You really like him?”

Harry looked down into his tea, lifting the bag up and down, waiting for it to steep. “I really do,” he admitted, “I really do. I know he was– Merlin he was an arse, wasn’t he?” 

Neville shrugged and nodded. “He really likes you, though.”

“Yeah. He isn’t so much of an arse anymore.” Harry looked over at Neville. “I don’t think he’s an arse at all, actually. He’s definitely not the bigot he used to be, and he’s– he’s really trying, you know?”

Neville smiled, finding himself a mug in Harry’s neatly organized cabinets– _neatly organized?_ “He’s got you all domesticated, hasn’t he?” he teased, looking at the even lines of cups, the stacks of clean plates on the shelves. “Look at you and your navigate-able kitchen appliances.” 

He immediately though about Blaise, and Blaise’s bright smile, half embarrassed, half self-deprecating, and entirely fond as he said _, listen to me, talking about unhealthy soil. You’ve got me all domesticated, Longbottom._ It had only been a couple days ago, and almost everything had been okay. That was the day he’d walked in looking shaky and Neville knew in a heartbeat he’d gotten an earful from someone.

Harry beamed. “He’s a sweetheart. You don’t mind him, do you?” He looked worriedly over his cup, pulling out the teabag and reaching for the sugar bowl. 

Neville didn’t take sugar with his tea, just milk, so he shook his head when Harry offered it over. Blaise took sugar in his tea, and Neville nearly always put it in before he went into the room so that Blaise didn’t have to watch the sugar go in, and looking at the sugar bowl made him think about Blaise all over again. 

His provocative grin and the way he smiled like he knew he was something worth looking at, the way he’d curl into Neville on the couch, how last week he had come in with a camera and said maybe photography was it this time, maybe this was the one, the thing he’d manage to care passionately about. 

He pulled himself back to _here_ , _now_ with no small difficulty. “I don’t think so. No, I don’t mind him.”

“Good,” Harry said firmly, “because I’m not letting him go.”

_Not like I let Blaise go_ , Neville thought, remembering _again_ Blaise’s back as he pulled open the door, the sound of the door shutting on his empty little house with no one else in it. He’d rather be in Blaise’s character-less rooms with Blaise than his cozy, plant-filled cottage without Blaise.

“I’m happy for you,” Neville told Harry, pulling the tea bag from his own tea, but he knew he sounded gloomy, no matter how much he meant it. 

“Hey, maybe you don’t have the whole story,” Harry suggested. “Blaise has practically been living in Draco’s place, just to moan and wail, pretty much, and Draco hasn’t gotten upset about it, much, which means whatever he’s upset about is probably logical, or at least, y’know. Understandable.”

“What could he be upset about?” Neville ran a hand through his hair. “I mean. _I’m_ the one who he walked out on. It’s not as if he… I dunno. Has anything to be upset about. Not to be insensitive. I just don’t see…”

“No,” Harry conceded, “I don’t see anything either, but you know how Blaise is.”

Neville did know how Blaise was. If there was one thing that mattered to him more than anything else, it was doing right by his friends, no matter how much he grumbled about what a sorry bunch they all were. And this seemed like the sort of reaction Blaise might have to doing _really_ wrong by one of his friends, in possibly the most extreme case Neville had ever seen.

The only thing was, Blaise hadn’t done wrong by Neville in any way until he walked out, and that seemed to be the _beginning_ of his _reaction_ to whatever he’d done. He couldn’t be reacting to his reaction…

Neville was thinking himself in circles.

“Yeah,” he said. “I know how Blaise is.” It was one of the things he loved most about Blaise, if he had to choose a small number, which was difficult. Blaise was so tied to his word, to his friendships and his loyalties.

Harry’s mouth twisted wryly as Neville added milk to his tea and turned to Harry, looking at the pink color of Harry’s mug and the nice wallpaper in the kitchen– anything to stop thinking about Blaise even more than he already was.

“You know,” Harry said, “Seeing as Blaise’s reaction is a bit odd–”

“Is it though?” Neville bit his lip. The tea was a bit hot to be taking down just yet, but he took a gulp anyway, wincing, somehow rather enjoying the pain, just a bit. “He’s _so_ into sex…”

Harry stirred his tea the way Draco would when he wanted to be coy, and Neville resisted laughing at Harry outright for it, though it was a close thing, seeing Harry unconsciously imitate Draco so completely. “I rather thought he was into you,” he hedged, sucking, very un-Draco like, at the drops of tea on the spoon before setting it down right on the counter. He caught Neville looking and shrugged. “Draco might clean it, but I really don’t mind the stains.”

“Neither do I, but Blaise does,” Neville said, and then sighed. “Blimey, Harry, do you hear me? I’m going in circles, I’m– _he’s_ the one who left. He has _nothing_ to be upset about.”

If Harry was surprised at how forceful Neville’s tone became at the last sentence, he didn’t show it– he was focusing on the cabinet opposite of him as if trying to figure out a complex problem or find his way through a maze on it. 

“You really don’t think he had a thing for you?” Harry pressed finally.

Neville forced himself to think back: their first kiss, the way Blaise looked at him then, his mouth on Neville’s and his hands in his hair, the way he’d looked at Neville when they ate sandwiches on the bench and talked Draco and Harry and lies by omission– but he only got that far before he gave up, the shattering pieces of his heart slowly falling apart becoming all too much to bear.

“No,” he said, and then amended, “I don’t know. He said he had a thing for my beard, but that’s– I mean. Physical.” He blew out a breath and looked to Harry. “Why did I let this happen?”

“Because you love him,” Harry said simply, and _wow, thanks,_ Neville already knew _that_.

“Do you have any indoor plants? I think you should get some.” Neville hadn’t seen any, though, unusually, today he hadn’t exactly been thinking about plants- he hadn’t been ever since Blaise closed the door behind him, looking for all the world as if someone had bloody _died_. 

Harry drained his cup like it was a glass of alcohol and set it in the sink, which brought to mind, somehow, the way Blaise would set his cup back on the tray with finality, refusing offers of a second cup, which Neville offered even though he knew Blaise would say no– he never wanted to assume for certain, and he’d been right. The past few days before That Day, Blaise had taken a second cup, and a biscuit, and then teased Neville for looking so utterly delighted by it.

“Come on, Nev,” Harry said, his tone rather defeated and resigned. “Don’t avoid your problems.”

“I wasn’t going to,” Neville protested, which was true. Only he felt alone and cold, and the ache inside him wasn’t getting any better. “We can talk about it. It’s just plants make me feel better, is all.”

Harry nodded thoughtfully. “I don’t have any house plants, sorry. The best I’ve got for you is a bouquet of flowers Draco brought me the other day.”

Neville smiled, though he didn’t laugh. He thought maybe if he wasn’t so down about Blaise he’d’ve laughed. “He brought you a _bouquet_?” He shook his head jokingly. “Are we talking about the same Draco Malfoy? I’ve got to see this.”

He did want to see it– cut stems or no, if the bouquet was fresh, it would be pretty, and there was always something refreshing and satisfying all at once about looking at bright, healthy plants. 

Harry grinned and set off down the hallway, to his bedroom. 

Harry’s bedroom was brighter than it had been when he’d first moved in, and Draco’s bouquet in a clear vase by his bedside table, which was sappy and heartwarming, and the sort of thing Blaise would scoff at, rolling his eyes and joking that it wouldn’t exactly be convenient for sex, would it, if there was a glass of water and bunch of flowers right by the bed.

“He’s Draco Malfoy for sure, just less of an arse and not a bigot,” Harry said again, as if anxious to make sure Neville thought well of Draco, which was arguably even sweeter. “He came over with it and shoved it at me and immediately started listing off the reasons why this did _not_ make him a sap. It was funny actually.”

Harry didn’t look like he thought it was funny. He looked like he burning up, he was so red, and smiling helplessly, looking at the bouquet.

In all fairness, it was a lovely bouquet, and fresh, too, so very healthy, with bright green leaves, a couple red roses among the lighter pink and yellows, stripped of their thorns and placed in clear, clean water. They looked really happy– though they’d die soon, right now they were as vibrant as they’d be right on the stalk.

“Blaise would like it,” Neville said almost without thinking, “he likes things that look good. Visually appealing.”

“You _do_ want to talk about him.”

Neville reached out and touched the green leaf of one of the roses, smiling a little at the shift of the stems in the water and thinking again about how the water on the sides of the glass caught the sunlight and how Blaise would like that, too. “I mean. Yeah, he’s _Blaise_.”

Harry made an amused sound. “I know he’s being an arse, and he was, obviously, an arse to leave like that… but even though this seems like history repeating, I think–” he laughed at himself– “Maybe you should talk to him?”

“Oh, Merlin.” Neville laughed too, turning to Harry. “What a catastrophe it was last time you said that, huh?”

Harry just shrugged, sitting on the edge of his bed and gazing at the bouquet. “I’m saying it again anyway.”

Neville eyed him suspiciously. “Is there something you know?”

_Is there something you’re not telling me?_

_There’s no such thing as a lie by omission._

Harry hummed his chin in his hands and his eyes still on the bouquet, which meant he was probably lying when he said, “No, I just think maybe you don’t have the whole story.”

“Huh.”

When Neville got to Blaise’s door, he was already questioning every choice he’d made up until then: the choice to not shave– Blaise _had_ said he liked his scruff– the choice to use the front door instead of the Floo like they maybe weren’t best mates anymore, which they weren’t, but it might’ve been a nice idea to pretend. He was wondering about not changing out of the stupid vest-sweater Blaise hated and whether this was a good idea– but no, it _was_ because if he dressed up for it, it would only put everything else _more_ on edge than it already would be.

“Neville Longbottom,” Mrs. Zabini drawled almost tonelessly, with just a hint of disapproval, looking at him like he might be something the cat had killed and dumped on the door or a beggar who might put his dirty hands all over her, she wasn’t sure yet. “Fancy seeing you here. I’d thank you to treat my son with a bit more care than you have.”

“Mum,” came Blaise’s rich, smooth voice from behind her, just a touch agitatedly, “ _Mum_ , I’ll take care of it.” He said it as if Neville was a chore, an item off a checklist. The next on Blaise’s long list of exes, just one more thing to do. 

“Oh, I’m sure you will.” Mrs. Zablini looked over her shoulder– Blaise was taller than her, but because of the way Mrs. Zabini draped herself across the doorway, Neville couldn’t catch a glimpse of Blaise, except for the tight black curls over the top of Mrs. Zabini’s straightened locks. 

She probably wasn’t _Mrs. Zabini_ , Neville thought, because she’d remarried so many times, but he’d always thought of her as Blaise’s mother, and _Blaise’s_ last name was Zabini, and probably never would be anything _but_ Zabini, since Blaise evidently wasn’t one for romance or marriage, unless for money, like his mother… _Neville_ was rather rich, all things considered, though he didn’t live like it, given his pureblood family’s inheritance…

He stopped that thought right there, watching as Mrs. Zabini languidly straightened up, like she had all the time in the world, and sauntered off into the shadowy house, her head high and her mouth slightly twisted like she knew something he didn’t, and it made her inherently better.

Neville was always struck by the similarities whenever he saw Mrs. Zabini– the high cheekbones, the full lips and thick, dark eyelashes, even if her straight hair wasn’t as nice as Blaise’s curls– but nothing ever struck him quite like the way they moved the same, slow and lazy, graceful and like they knew they were drawing eyes.

Even when she was out of the doorway, Neville found he didn’t _want_ to look at Blaise, because then everything would hurt again, more than it already was. 

“Your side?” he asked needlessly, meaning Blaise’s side of the house. 

He felt Blaise nod next to him, and they set off, silent, Blaise’s movements jerky and awkward as a newborn colt, like the strange time-lapses they showed on the nature programs of baby ferns uncurling and coral growing. 

“Not lurking around Draco’s then?” To be fair, Neville had given it a day, too afraid to act before he took a deep breath and realized that if he didn’t do _something_ he’d be stuck thinking himself in circles like this on and on, never able to move on.

Blaise laughed bitterly. “He said I was being stupid again. The way he did when he didn’t let me go to dinner with you and Harry?”

Neville remembered– it had been a month ago but it could’ve been years ago for the way he felt. So much had happened since then and he wished he could go back to right then and tell himself to just. Say no. “But that was about you pining,” he said.

They’d made it into the first of Blaise’s rooms, right beyond the wards that separated the two sides of the house– sound proofing charms and the like. Blaise did suck up to his mother for the stay in the house, but he drew the line– literally– at _living together_ in any sense of the word. 

“I know.” Blaise said, turning to him for the first time as they stepped through the wards, magic prickling the hair on Neville’s arms. “That’s not important–”

“ _‘Take care of him?’_ ” Neville asked, the words bursting indignantly out of his mouth. Mrs. Zabini couldn’t hear him anymore, and the words still rankled around him, pounding in the back of his head. “What did–”

“ _That’s not important either_ ,” Blaise interrupted, almost frantically. Blaise never interrupted. Neville saw, now, that he looked a mess. Bags under his eyes, like hadn’t slept for ages; his clothes, even, a little disarrayed, something wild in his eyes. “Neville I–”

“What do you mean it isn’t important?” Neville said, to distract himself from the way his heart still went out to Blaise, still panged in his chest when he saw how miserable Blaise looked- he shouldn’t have to be the one upset, not if _Blaise_ had walked out and acted like _that_ –

“I have to ask you–”

“I’m pretty upset with you, if you haven’t noticed, so if you’d answer me–”

“ _Neville_ ,” Blaise shouted, so loudly Neville froze, half-sure Mrs. Zabini could’ve heard it from the other end of the world, wards or no. “ _Please_.”

Neville was too shocked to even say anything– Blaise didn’t yell or interrupt, and he looked like the world was falling apart. He managed a weak nod.

Blaise fixed him with a gaze, his eyes full of conflict and fear and a million other things Neville had no idea why he would be feeling, all things considered.

“Did I–” Blaise’s voice cracked, and he swallowed hard. “Did– you’re asexual.”

Neville nodded.

“Did I make you…” Blaise closed his eyes, like he couldn’t look at Neville any longer. He asked in a rush, “Did I make you do anything you didn’t want to?”

Neville’s heart stopped in his chest; his breath escaped in a soft sort of shocked laugh. Blaise’s head shot up, his eyes wide, like the laugh was supposed to mean something and he was trying to frantically to decode it.

Everything made sense– Blaise’s face when Neville first told him, Blaise’s alleged misery for the past nearly-a-week, his panic and his horror, right down to the way Blaise was looking at him now, like his life hung on the next words out of Neville’s mouth.

“Godric,” Neville murmured, because he didn’t have anything else. Relief came over him in waves. He felt weak and light and desperately happy, somehow. 

Blaise was still staring at him intently. 

Neville took Blaise’s face in his hands. “No,” he said. “No, of course not.”

Blaise’s face twisted up like he might cry, and a soft sound escaped from Blaise’s throat. He surged forward into Neville’s arms, burying his face in Neville’s shoulder, his ragged breathing in Neville’s ear and his racing heartbeat pressed to Neville’s chest.

He was warm and shaking like a leaf, his limbs weak and his weight heavy, but with his arms around Neville _so tight_ , as if terrified Neville might disappear into thin air.

“No,” Neville whispered over and over, “No, never. You couldn’t. Not you, Blaise. Never.”

Something hot and wet soaked through Neville’s shirt where the sweater cut off– Blaise _was_ crying. “Oh, goodness,” Neville murmured, running a hand up and down Blaise’s back. “Maybe we should sit down.”

“Sorry,” Blaise muttered into Neville’s shoulder, muffled and shaky. “Sorry that was– I didn’t mean to avoid you. I thought– oh _Merlin_ –” He held Neville even tighter, which Neville hadn’t thought was possible until Blaise did it.

Neville pressed a chaste kiss to the back of Blaise’s neck, still floating down to Earth, gently. “You’ll strangle me at this rate.”

“Sorry,” Blaise murmured again, and stepped back, wiping his eyes. “I got your shirt wet, too. I bloody hate those vests.”

“They’re nice,” Neville said, “they feel good.”

Blaise shook his head, his throat bobbing, and pulled his hand, leading him to the living room.

The living room was brighter than the hallway, because of the windows, and didn’t quite look like a catalogue anymore.

“You–” Neville looked around. “You’ve got houseplants.”

“I like the way they look,” Blaise said, finding himself a place on the couch, stretching out, moving his feet when Neville went to sit by him. Curling into Neville’s body, just like before, but more careful this time. Hesitantly, almost.

“Being ace doesn’t mean I’m made of glass,” Neville informed him helpfully, and put an arm around him, pulling him closer. 

He wasn’t sure what they were– they’d never really been boyfriends, and they obviously weren’t going to be friends with benefits– Blaise wanted someone who had a sexual attraction to him for that. But knew he could _hold_ Blaise, at least, and he’d take that.

“So– so what _does_ it mean?” Blaise was warm against him, firm. His voice still wobbled from the crying. He leaned his head on Neville’s shoulder and Neville’s heart skipped a beat. “I know it means different things– it’s, it’s a spectrum?”

Neville felt Blaise’s fingers running up the edge of his sleeve idly, the worn fabric of his long sleeve shirt under his sweater-vest hideously clashing with his shirt. Blaise hadn’t commented on it, though, Neville realized with some satisfaction.

“Yeah, it’s a range. Some people are– you know. Sex _repulsed_ , but I’m not.”

Blaise breathed out a sigh against him. “Thank Merlin for _that_. If you were sex repulsed and we– I think I’d never forgive myself.”

“ _That’s_ a bit dramatic,” Neville mumbled, feeling warm inside. “For me it’s not that way. I just don’t crave it, or whatever it is you feel.”

“Like I want to bend over and get fucked into next week on your–”

“Like that,” Neville interrupted immediately, glad for Blaise’s immediate return to sexuality as he was disappointed by it. Even if Blaise would get someone else, who’d want him the way he wanted them, at least Neville knew Blaise wouldn’t treat him like glass or stifle his comments around Neville. “I don’t feel like– I just don’t really have a feeling about it. At all.” His face burned as he added, “I still experience the physical pleasure of it.”

“I could tell _that_ ,” Blaise snickered, nudging at Neville’s shoulder, which didn’t help his blush one bit. “But you seemed like you…” He seemed to search for words.

Neville stared at the tree-like plant, broad-leaved and tropical-looking, in the corner pot. Correctly placed based on the amount of sunlight that came in through the huge windows in this room, which stretched almost all the way to the high ceiling.

“I can still _enjoy_ it, you know. I can still want it, kind of. Like– Like how I don’t really care about making food or cucumber sandwiches, but I really like making them because _you_ like them. You know. It’s not like I have strong feelings about the sandwiches.” Neville struggled to sit up straighter without knocking Blaise’s head off of his shoulder; these couches weren’t amazing, but they were soft enough that he was slipping. “We could still– I mean. I could still– er– have sex with you.”

Blaise sat up and grabbed his hands, squeezing them tightly and meeting Neville’s eyes. “Or we could not,” he said.

Neville’s heart sunk a little, but not that much. It wasn’t as if he’d expected differently, it was just that if they kept having sex, they could also keep kissing and sleeping on the couch and watching bad movies together.

Blaise bit is lip and hurried on, oblivious to Neville’s disappointment. “We could just– go out. Without having sex.”

Neville blinked and straightened even more, staring at Blaise. “Er– why would you want to go out with _me?_ ”

Blaise’s mouth went tight. “Because…” He floundered. “Because I told Draco I’d ask you out by last week!”

Neville swallowed hard, his heart cracking in his chest. “Sorry?” He really, _really_ hoped he’d heard wrong. “Are you serious? Is that also why we were shagging?” 

Blaise shook his head hard as Neville tried to stand up, wishing he were anywhere but on Blaise’s boring couch with his pretty new houseplant, hearing this after the fact. 

“It’s not– it’s not like that.” He grabbed Neville’s hand hard enough to hurt, his eyes wide and urgent. “That came out wrong. It’s– it wasn’t like a bet or anything.”

“That’s only a little bit reassuring,” Neville bit out, his voice shaking. “I really, _really_ do like you, and I thought we were friends, at least.”

“We were!” Blaise said, “We- we are. I think. It’s just that–”

“I was there? And you were, what, out of other options?” Neville tugged at his hand, angry, suddenly, at _Draco_ of all people, which didn’t even make sense, because it’s obviously Blaise’s fault, except: “Why did Draco even want you to ask me out by last week?”

“That’s what I’m trying to say,” Blaise groaned exasperatedly, “It’s because I’ve wanted you for– well, it doesn’t really matter, but Draco caught on.”

Neville froze. “Draco– you– what do you mean he caught on? I thought you were dating– who was it? Goldstien?” He remembered, suddenly, the dinner they’d had, where Draco had implied Blaise was pining after someone other than Goldstien, even though he was still technically dating Goldstien, which consisted of mostly shagging. “Wait– _wait_ –” he stared at Blaise. 

Blaise, who never looked out of his element fucking _anywhere_ looked stiff as hell in his own house, his hand still holding Neville’s tightly, his other in his lap, his eyes locked on his own fingers where they held fast to Neville’s hand. “Goldstien,” he confirmed, smiling wryly to himself. “I thought I told you we didn’t care about each other.”

“Are– are you saying you _care about me?_ ” Neville’s voice was steadily getting higher and more hysterical, but he couldn’t seem to get a handle on it for the life of him.

Blaise’s eyes flicked to the houseplant– it really was a nice houseplant, happy and green and bright. It lent a sort of character to the room that had been missing for a long time, but Blaise was staring at it blankly as if he wasn’t quite sure he cared what he was looking at, so long as it wasn’t Neville. “I don’t know.” he shrugged robotically. “Maybe.”

Neville’s voice came out as a whisper. “Maybe I want a better answer than that.”

Blaise’s eyes jerked back to Neville’s, still red-rimmed and watery. “Maybe I don’t have one! And anyway, it’s not like you’ve given _me_ any answers!”

“I did tell you what sort of ace I was–”

“But then _why did you have sex with me?_ ” Blaise’s words were full of frustration and confusion, two emotions he didn’t like displaying. He released Neville’s hand to throw his arms around his knees, hugging them to his chest, breaking two more of his rules– shoes on the couch and curling up tight.

Neville took his hand back slowly, searching for an honest answer that wouldn’t be too revealing. He didn’t come up with one.

He sighed. Game over, he supposed. He’d have to say it some day anyway, and clearly, the not-knowing was driving Blaise up the wall over some moral dilemma that Neville personally didn’t see as that big a deal– he’d consented and confirmed he hadn’t felt coerced– what more was Blaise going to worry about?

Neville suddenly felt like hugging his knees to his chest himself. “I…” He discovered that the houseplant, with its broad, green leaves, was the perfect thing to stare at, after all. “I just wanted to have something with you. I liked being something you wanted.”

He didn’t look over, but he heard Blaise’s sharp intake of breath, the rustle of Blaise moving, and felt the couch dip. His heart flight over fight, but his body wasn’t moving one bit, so he was stuck with a racing heart and an absolutely blank mind. If Voldemort himself had come up and demanded Neville come up with something, _anything_ to fill this silence, he’d still be at a loss.

“Neville.” Blaise sounded closer now, and faint. His shaky voice had a strange note to it– Neville would say hopeful if he didn’t know better. He could see Blaise’s silhouette in his peripheral vision and managed not look through sheer force of will. “Neville, if I’m misreading this–”

“Oh for Merlin’s sake,” Neville cried out. He couldn’t bear any of this a moment longer. “I fancy you, or haven’t you noticed?” He whirled around to face Blaise, his locked up frustration boiling over. “I’m bloody in love with you and all you care about is sex! Is it so farfetched to think maybe I’d let you have it if that’s what it takes to have you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Aren't you glad all the chapters are published together?


	7. A Romantic Blaise and an Asexual Neville

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Did Blaise mention he's taken up photography?

**Blaise**

“I don’t only care about sex,” Blaise heard himself saying, his ears still buzzing with Neville’s words. _I’m bloody in love with you._

He wanted to say it back, especially with Neville looking at him like that, his body still and his eyes wide, watching Blaise as if somehow hoping Blaise hadn’t heard him say it, even though he had been yelling when he said it. Neville never yelled, but today was the first time for a lot of things.

He _wanted_ to say it back, he did, he did, only the words were hard to get out– they felt like too much and not enough at the same time, and he felt like such a coward as Neville ran a hand through his hair and looked away, and Blaise still hadn’t said The Words. 

Neville had said it _first_ , after Blaise had been working up to say it for months, years, and now Blaise felt like they weren’t enough, not nearly enough. _If you can say it, it’s not enough for me. If you love me, I love you more, if you feel like_ this _, I feel a dozen times more than this, and it’s drowning me._

“Forget I said that,” Neville mumbled. It felt like reverse deja vu, bringing to mind his own words just a week ago, right after he’d shouted his love for Neville in front of fucking _Harry Potter_ , one of Neville’s closest friends. _You can forget I said that_. 

Everything was going in circles, everything and yet the world had turned on its head, everything and nothing was the same– Neville was in love with him.

Somehow, Blaise couldn’t find any words in himself to explain that he felt it too, _Merlin_ did he feel it too. Instead, he said, “Did I tell you I’ve gotten into photography? I really like it.”

Neville’s body curled even more in on itself, and Blaise cursed himself again. Why was it so hard to tell this wide-eyed, beautiful man how incredibly he pulled at Blaise’s heart with everything he did?

“I remember,” Neville said quietly, his words slow, like he was weighing whether to expect a response to his confession or if it was going into the void. It most certainly was _not_ going into the void. It shot straight into Blaise’s heart, and he wanted to store it away for safekeeping, lock it in there so he would never forget it. “I remember you were going to try it, anyway, but… then…”

Blaise hadn’t given him any updates, because he had been holed up in Draco’s place being eaten alive by guilt of what might be true. Another wave of relief washed over him now as he thought about it, and how wonderfully wrong he had been.

“Well I think I’ve really started to like it,” he said lamely. “I’ll show you the pictures I’ve taken so far.”

“Okay,” Neville said, still quietly.

Blaise hated himself, but he thought the photographs… well, they said _something_ , and he’d only been taking photos for a week and a half, so _surely_ Neville would see it, would feel it, would understand, even just a little bit, how Blaise felt.

He managed to stand up, which was a wonder because it felt as if the world was still in the middle of being remade and the ground didn’t have any business being steady. His knees certainly weren’t steady.

“I’ll fetch my camera.” He looked at Neville, who nodded miserably. Neville was watching with his arms hugging himself tightly, and Blaise reached for something to say, anything to say to reassure him that whatever Blaise couldn’t figure out how to say, Neville was everything, and Blaise didn’t mean what this silence meant either. “Neville? I– I want you to see.”

Neville swallowed and stood, and Blaise set off down the long hallway, their footsteps the only sounds in the world, the frantic ache in his chest the only feeling. The hallway seemed to stretch on forever, on and on towards Blaise’s bedroom where the curtains were closed and even the white bed looked dull in the shadow. 

Blaise flicked his wand, opening the curtains and then murmured a soft, “ _Accio,_ camera.” 

It came to him from the nightstand as he sat on the edge of his bed and watched Neville join him, fidgeting and beautiful, the light from the now-uncovered windows catching in his blond hair.

“We’ll still be friends, won’t we?” Neville accepted the camera from Blaise, and if he noticed Blaise’s hands were trembling, he didn’t say anything about it, though he took the camera with extra care.

Neville fumbled clumsily with the buttons of the Muggle camera, his brow creasing and his lips forming the words silently.

The fire in Blaise’s heart raced through the rest of him, tugging at words that wouldn’t fit inside of his mouth, until finally he said what he _could_ fit in his mouth, as pathetically insufficient as it was. 

“I don’t want to just be friends,” he whispered as Neville found his way into the already taken pictures, all of them still, like frozen moments in time.

Neville’s fingers stopped on the buttons, his cheeks flushing and his body, right beside Blaise, going tense. He was looking down at the camera’s first picture, but the quiet, uneven cadence of his breath told Blaise that Neville had heard him.

The first picture was of Neville, standing in his own house, smiling at a plant hanging from the ceiling, a single finger on the tip of a leaf hanging down, radiant in the sunlight of a spring’s midafternoon. His eyes were bright and pleased, his other hand grasping his wand loosely. He’d been watering the plants when Blaise took that shot, wanting to preserve that moment of Neville’s happiness forever.

Apprehension twisted in Blaise’s stomach, weaving and winding its way into his heart like Neville’s vines as Neville stared at the picture for a long, long moment before pressing the little arrow button to the next picture without a word. 

The next picture was Neville’s bookshelf, the plants spilling out over it, green and happy, little knickknacks on the shelves– seed packets, bookmarks, pressed leaves that Neville had taken out of the books he’d pressed them in. Neville crouched in the corner, the light on his jaw a cloudy sort of morning light, his trousers loose and soft, his hands cupping a small ceramic pot that he was placing on the bottom shelf. He looked at home and in his element, so comfortable.

Could Neville see it too? The way the photo captured his home, his daily life, his little moment of happiness? The intimacy of the photo that Blaise felt when he saw it? Could Neville feel the rush of being seen the same way Blaise felt the rush of seeing something so easy and relaxed, so tender?

He didn’t know, because Neville’s expression flickered, and then Neville clicked forward again…

Neville in the kitchen, his hands around a knife, cutting up mint leaves, a mint leaf on his tongue, his eyes watching his own hands. Every line of his body right down to the curve of his neck as he leaned over the mint showed his careful way of moving, of doing things.

And again…

Neville on the couch, smiling over a cup of tea.

Again…

Neville outside, his knees dirty, dirt smudged over his cheek, gardening, a leaf in his hair. 

Blaise felt barer and more exposed than he ever had been with his clothes off, or if someone saw him sleeping, or anything revealing at all, nothing came close to the way he felt pulled open now. This was like taking a peak into his heart– the way the light caught on Neville, the context of each picture, the easy, natural way every frame centered around Neville, even when he wasn’t physically in center. It was like saying _you are the axis of my earth, the sun that I orbit, the light that I live for_.

 _I love you_ didn’t feel like enough until it had context… this, this was the context, Blaise supposed. Some context it was. It felt like being analysed; it wasn’t a window to his heart, it was like turning the outside of his heart to glass. All of it clear and easy to see inside. All of it just as easy to shatter.

Neville stared at the last picture– Neville looking at nothing in particular, doing nothing in particular, standing nowhere in particular, just _being there._ Just standing and smiling gently at the world, maybe in the sunlight of the kitchen window or the morning glow in his cozy living room, maybe in the middle of the day in the middle of the street, the photo didn’t give any hints. 

Because it didn’t matter. What mattered was the way Neville’s eyes shone and the way his lips curved tenderly, almost intimately, as if the world itself was one of his closest friends. What mattered was the way this moment in time made Blaise fall in love all over again, his heart singing longingly in his chest.

And then Neville clicked the little button at the top, and the screen shut off. The screen made a little clicking noise as it shut off, the blankets rustled as Neville moved to set the camera tentatively on the bedside table, holding it like he wasn’t sure how he felt about it just yet.

“I wasn’t going to show them to anyone,” Blaise found it in himself to say, instead of the rushing _I love you_ that threatened to spill out, now that those photos had cracked him open anyway. “Or obsess over them like a creep, just. Those… moments. Felt like they belonged to be kept.”

Neville made a sound in his throat, his hands falling to the smooth covers of Blaise’s bed, tapping against the edge of it. “They’re all of me.”

Blaise, for the life of him, couldn’t read anything out of that tone. “I take pictures of the extraordinary. I guess.”

Neville stared at him, his voice soft. “They’re really mundane things. Watering the plants? Cutting mint?”

“I get to decide what’s extraordinary,” Blaise whispered back, catching his eyes. “Do you see… do you see it?” He didn’t know how else to ask. _Can you feel it? How much my heart calls for you?_

Neville looked down at the camera on the stand. He looked at Blaise, his eyes catching Blaise’s and holding them fast. He seemed to weigh his words. “Do you really?”

Blaise died inside. His throat made a sound. “So much,” he said, “So much.”

Neville’s eyes filled, bright and tender, relieved. He reached out a hand, and Blaise held it. He was sure he was going to burst. Neville’s hand was soft and solid in his own, clean of the dirt often under his nails and winding their fingers together with a sort of deliberation that stopped Blaise’s breath in his chest.

He looked at the gentle clasp of their hands, the sweet path of Neville’s thumb up and down the side of his hand, the way his own fingers looked interlocked with Neville’s pale ones. He could devote himself to the study of how this moment looked, how it felt, _this_ could be his passion, he thought, if not for the camera full of pictures of Neville on the bed stand. 

“I do like kissing,” Neville said.

Blaise all but threw himself at Neville, turning and pushing him back on the bed in one movement, refusing to relinquish the hand in his grasp, but allowing his other to wind its way tightly into Neville’s hair. 

Neville was soft under him, his unoccupied hand falling to the back of Blaise’s neck as if it belonged there, pulling him down, pulling him closer, pulling their mouths together. Blaise could almost be convinced that _was_ what Neville’s hand was meant for, but just then it slid, flat-palmed, against his back, sending shivers down his spine, sparks through his body.

Neville’s wide eyes opened into his for one breathless moment, and Blaise found himself wishing he could catch this frame in a snapshot– Neville’s lips parted, his gaze endlessly tender, his mouth not even trying to smile, halfway slack with wonder. Blaise hadn’t ever been looked at like _that_.

And then Neville’s eyes fluttered shut, his blond lashes shining against his cheeks, his hand gently pulling at Blaise, and Blaise closed the inches between them.

It was nothing short of miraculous, that kiss. Blaise’s whole body tingled with it, with the way Neville’s soft lips opened under his, the way it was gentle and shaky and made of air and breath and sugar. The way it wasn’t kissing for pleasure or as a gateway to anything more, it was just kissing for kissing’s sake. 

Neville caught his lips gently and released, rolling them on their sides and then moving on top of him, pressing Blaise back into the covers. It didn’t feel like a path leading anywhere else– to hands, to open legs and loud cries– it felt like a destination, and end point, a place where Neville could settle in. Neville’s hands were sure and careful, gentle, his lips sweet and wanting.

He’d been nervous before, always stealing himself for the _more_ for the next step on the path. Never kissing for kissing, or touching for touching. _That_ was what was different now. Now he touched Blaise the way he wanted to, and it went nowhere. Because right here was good enough. Because right here was _better_. Blaise could feel it in the trace of his fingertips, in the rhythm of his lips.

If right here was where Neville wanted to be, Blaise never wanted to leave.

Blaise looked up at Neville and his messy blond hair and his stupidly cozy, horrendously clashing sweater-vest. “I love you,” he managed to say. “I love you more than whatever _I love you_ is supposed to mean.”

Neville’s eyes, Blaise was sure, had never been brighter. His heart felt like it might burst out of his chest, just looking at him and his smile, and the way his eyes found Blaise’s, as if to reassure himself that Blaise had said it and meant it. _I made him that happy._

“I like to think _I love you_ extends infinitely,” he murmured. He kissed the tip of Blaise’s nose, the center of his forehead, and sat back against the headboard. “Isn’t that what love is?”

Blaise just hummed and leaned against his shoulder, staring at the white wall across from them. “That’s certainly not what my mother taught me.”

Neville turned and gazed at him, as if searching, but gently. Considering, almost. “And you…”

“Won’t murder you and take your fortune,” Blaise provided, which was easier than saying, _if love is infinite, then I love you, and if love is not infinite, then I love you infinitely._

It felt like too much for one day, possibly too much for a lifetime. It was the kind of feeling that should’ve brewed over decades, and he had no idea how it had made its way, burning, into his heart in just a few years. (Five. At most. He certainly hadn’t been pining before that. He was _sure_.) He had no intention of saying it. He had no idea how he would even go about saying it.

But Neville seemed to understand, at least to some degree, because he smiled like he knew what Blaise meant and pulled him close. 

“That’s all that matters,” he said, laughing. “I haven’t a fortune anyway. Or a small one, I guess you would say.”

“No, but you have a lovely home.” Blaise gestured to his own bare room, shifting on the bed so he could wrap his arm around Neville. “And a very nice bedroom.”

Neville laughed again, bright and surprised. “I didn’t think you really liked my house. It’s so… unassuming? Or…” He shook his head, his eyebrows drawn together the way they did when he was thinking. Blaise’s stomach jolted when Neville scratched his beard.

“Humble,” Blaise suggested. “In a good way. It’s so _inhabited._ It feels like you live there.”

Neville smiled, his cheeks flushing, and his eyes darting to the camera. “I do live there,” he said, but Blaise could tell Neville knew what he meant. “Like the bookshelf?”

“Like the bookshelf.” 

Neville’s little knick knacks, his shelves full of plants. It felt like he belonged. It felt like a _home_.

Neville was looking at him. “You _really_ like my house, don’t you.” The side of his mouth tugged up, amused and fond, sweetly shy. 

Blaise’s heart tumbled in his chest.

 _He loves me_.

“I really do. But I’m biased, since you’re there.”

“And the bedroom?” Neville chewed his lip. “I’d like to…” He flushed. “I’d like to have sex with you sometimes,” he said in a rush, his hand on Blaise’s shoulder tightening just a bit, seemingly unconsciously.

Blaise’s stomach dropped. “No, no, that’s not what I meant. I meant– your bedroom is really nice, because it isn’t bare like mine. I can… see the books on your bedside table and the plants on top of your wardrobe, and…” he felt as if he was rambling, which he thought was endearing on Neville and probably rather awkward on himself. “It’s not about sex.”

Neville kissed him again, on the mouth, and Blaise momentarily forgot all about it not being about sex, what with Neville’s hands in his hair pulling him close until his knee ended up accidentally between Blaise’s thighs. 

“I know,” Neville said, “But I’m not sex repulsed. And I don’t _not_ like sex, and _you_ like sex. So, you know. Every so often.”

Blaise’s body seemed to like that idea very much. Blaise wasn’t so sure. “I…” he didn’t know what to say. “You obviously know your boundaries, but.” He swallowed. “You know I’d stay with you if you didn’t want to have any sex at all, right?”

Neville flushed. “Right. But that’s not the case. I want to have sex to make you happy.” 

“ _You_ make me happy,” Blaise said urgently.

Neville’s eyes brightened at this, and he kissed Blaise _again_ , like he couldn’t help it. Blaise felt like falling apart in his arms. 

“I _know_ ,” he said. “I know now. But you enjoy sex, and I want to give that to you.”

Blaise couldn’t find anything wrong with that, but he was sure there was something. _Oh_ , right– “You’re comfortable with that?”

Neville laughed. “You’ve had sex with me before. Did it seem like I was cringing away from you?”

Blaise’s body didn’t do well with the reminder, and Neville laughed harder. “ _Neville_.”

Neville sobered. “It’s _okay_ ,” he murmured, looking Blaise in the eyes earnestly. “I promise to tell you when I don’t want to.”

Blaise nodded, reluctantly. “No more lies by omission?”

“I thought you didn’t believe in lies by omission.”

“I’ve amended it,” Blaise conceded. “I think at some point, not telling you how I felt became somewhat of a lie by omission.”

Neville grinned. “Really?”

Blaise shoved him with his shoulder, but stayed there, leaning against Neville. Taking in the faint smell of flowers and grass on his skin, the gentle rise and fall of his breathing. “Well, here we are now.” 

He tipped his head to look at Neville, and Neville smiled back, bright like the morning sun. “No more lies by omission.”

And then, because Blaise couldn’t, for the life of him, keep it locked up in his heart any longer, he slipped off the bed and kissed Neville’s hand and said, “I _love_ you.”

Neville followed him up, out of his boring, bare room into the slightly less boring living room, the one with the houseplant. “You did say.”

“No– _I love you_. Not my mother’s love. The way _you_ love…” He felt strange finishing that sentence, so he didn’t.

“The way I love you,” Neville said firmly, “You can say it.”

Blaise’s heart fluttered at the idea, and he tightened his grip on Neville’s hand. “Your place?”

They Apparated out of the living room.

Neville’s bookshelf still sat there, covered in books. Blaise hadn’t seen it in a week, a little more, but it felt like he hadn’t been here in a lifetime. 

He was irrationally relieved to see that nothing had changed while he was gone– the television still stood, turned-off and black, the plants still hung from the ceiling brightly, the sofa was still worn and soft, and the coffee table still had little spoon and tea and teacup stains on it that irked Blaise to no end but felt inexplicably homey, though he’d never admit it.

“You love _this_ place?” _Neville_ loved this place. Blaise never thought Neville would think someone else might not. There was nothing to dislike, because it was too genuine and true to begrudge it the way it cluttered or teetered or dusted. 

Blaise followed Neville into the kitchen, and Neville did him the favor of not blinking an eye at it. He always liked the way Neville never made a big deal of things– it made things so much less of an ordeal to do. 

“It feels like you,” he said. He didn’t try to make it sexual, and Neville’s mouth ticked up. Blaise went weak in the knees at the sight of it.

“And you love me,” Neville said simply. It _was_ simple, and complicated, too. All at once. It was everything. Everything was such a simple concept, and yet so much and so different from itself and so diverse and wild and free and contained in one word, and _that_ was how Blaise felt about Neville. “You can say it, Blaise. _I love you_.”

Blaise felt himself melting into nothing. He put sugar into his tea and stirred. “You love me.”

“Yeah, I do.” Neville sounded oddly proud, though whether it was over the words _– you love me_ , Blaise thought again, watching Neville open the fridge– or about the sugar, Blaise didn’t know. “And not the way your mother loves. She’s terrifying, you know. She seemed convinced I’d been careless with you.”

Blaise’s heart skipped a beat at the sheepish smile Neville shot at him as he pulled out a plate from the refrigerator and headed back to the living room.

“She doesn’t know me too well if she thinks _you_ were the one being careless with _me_ ,” Blaise commented wryly. “Which… I’m sorry for.”

Neville set out the plate. Fucking _cucumber sandwiches._ “You’re fine. You never treated me badly, I just never thought you’d… it wasn’t your fault I didn’t think there was anything there.”

“Well, at least that feeling was mutual.” Blaise joined him on the couch. “I wish I just _told_ you.” It seemed ridiculous now, how much they’d stood right next to each other and wanted to reach for each other and thought they were too far apart. _As if_. They were inches apart, apparently. “Then I’d make it to that dinner with you and Draco and Harry.”

“Spaghetti was good,” Neville said. “Lights were nice.” His eyes saidI’m _the one you were pining over._ Wondrous and happy.

Blaise liked this better: the natural light streaming through the window, catching Neville’s lashes, the blush of his cheek, the curve of his bright smile. The soft couch that didn’t belong in any magazine. He could take a picture of them here, now. 

Neville and Blaise, sipping tea on Tuesday, eating cucumber sandwiches.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Can you tell I don't know the first thing about photography?)

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!! Please, if you enjoy this, check out all the other ones from the collection!


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